


stars, hide your fires

by tokyonightskies



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Prostitution, BDSM, Blindfolds, Control, Cunnilingus, Daddy Kink, Emotional Baggage, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Eventual Relationships, F/M, Falling In Love, Female Friendship, Flirting, Friendship, Gags, Loss, Masturbation, Mutual Masturbation, Safeword Use, Sex Toys, Slow Burn, Strangers to Lovers, Texting, Trust Issues, Undressing, Unresolved Emotional Tension, Unresolved Romantic Tension, Unresolved Sexual Tension, Vibrators, Work In Progress
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-11-02
Updated: 2018-07-08
Packaged: 2018-08-28 16:48:47
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 11
Words: 58,090
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8454169
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tokyonightskies/pseuds/tokyonightskies
Summary: “Permission to speak freely,” Amélie requests, observing how he puts his large hands on the backrest of the chair in front of the desk and expertly spins it round on two legs so it’s facing the bed.There’s a hush of silence that befalls the room as he sits down and hauls a hand through his dark curls. Gabriel tugs on his sweater and pulls it over his head, folds it meticulously on his lap and then gingerly places it on his desk. Everything about the efficiency of his movements betrays the discipline in his military life. And his hands of course, Amélie muses quietly as she awaits his response, a pair of soldier’s hands, tough and coarse and not unscathed. When he’s done with this almost ritualistic display, he gives her a curt nod.“You’re paying me three fifty just to watch me get off?”It seems her question came across as too blunt because he narrows his eyes, drops his hands between his knees out of habit and hunches forwards a bit, makes himself smaller while he shouldn’t. He tilts his head and regards her, unsmiling, answers after a beat, “Yeah.”





	1. Introduction

**Author's Note:**

> i. introduction

.

He pulls on  the sheets until they’re taut and wrinkleless, and tucks them neatly underneath the pillows against the black headboard of his bed. Then he props the folded quilt on the foot-end, reconsiders, brings it back to the living room and dumps it in the corner sofa.

His apartment’s always relatively tidy, but he vacuum-cleaned, dusted off the shelves, and cleared out all of the paperwork on his desk for the occasion.

It’s seven forty nine and the receptionist of the escort service assured him on the phone that the woman he asked for would arrive at eight on the dot. Punctuality was a trait Gabriel appreciated in a person, and despite his initial hesitation to the _entire idea,_ he found himself looking forward to the evening.

Stumbling across the site of the escort service was some sort of happy accident. _Sure_ , hiring a prostitute had come up a couple of times before, mostly after a couple of Desperados with some friends, but it never seemed more than a flight of fancy.

Gabe always figured he’d find himself someone who would set him straight, someone to settle down with, but _eventually_ never became soon, and _soon_ never became now. And he’s turned fifty six two months ago, and in his line of work, finding a partner is difficult enough, but he misses regularly having sex and he especially misses intimacy.

Every escort had her own page on the website and he’d read each of them three times before he started to consider the idea in earnest, another time to go _fuck it_ and decide on which woman to ask for. It wasn’t cheap, two hundred fifty an hour, and a hundred to three hundred extra for specific kinks, within reasonable limits of course, but the service promised class.

He stalks back to his bedroom and opens the double doors to his wardrobe, where down at the bottom, three boxes of unopened sex toys were placed.

Nothing _too extravagant_ , just a regular non-vibrating dildo, a remote-controlled vibe and an anal plug, all in a red that matches two of his pillows.

His gaze falls on the plastic encasing outlining the dildo in the box— _five inches, smooth, and  with a free bottle of lube on order_ , and a thread of anxiety unfurls in the pit of his stomach.

There are a bunch of questions rushing to the forefront of his mind, basically a bunch of _what ifs_ : what if she doesn’t want to do this in front of him?; what if she thinks him and his ugly mug pathetic?; but they are simply symptoms of the root problem he’s experiencing: an overwhelming sense of insecurity.

Gabriel’s didn’t come out of his deployment to the Afghan-Pakistani border in 2002 unscathed; scars mar his body from head to feet, there are bouts of night terrors, bouts of insomnia, and he’s overly sensitive to loud noises and sudden movement. Not to mention he’s still employed as a Blackwatch security consultant and regularly makes trips to the training facilities in North Carolina and Illinois, or to HQ in Virginia.

Needless to say, his social life _suffers._

His hands come to rest on the backrest of the chair in front of his desk and he pushes the chair around a bit, spins it around on its two back legs so the seat’s facing the bed, then spins it back. With the tabletop of his plywood desk free of paperwork, the sheer size of the piece of furniture contrasts with his laptop and the slim spine of the black reading light and appears larger than it usually is.

He feels the itch to take out his phone and check the time, even if there’s an alarm clock on the nightstand, but changes his mind, drumming his fingertips on the outline of his phone in his pocket.

When the receptionist of the escort service had called to discuss the details of the arrangement— _transaction_ , was the word she had used, but he doesn’t really want to think about it like that— he was overcome with an unsettling helplessness.

There was a form on the site that he had to fill in, tackling the basics, like his criminal history, physical and mental health, and his financial credentials. Not long after he sent the form through and got a confirmation email, he got a phone call from the service to get into specifics.

She had asked him about what he would like the lady, _Amélie_ , his mind supplies him, to wear; if they would be going out for a special evening; and then if he had any preferences about her lingerie. Brand, color, material, things Gabriel hadn’t really thought about and couldn’t answer in the span of three seconds, so he blurted out that he would like her to wear black and something lacy, if that was possible.

There was no reason for the lady to dress up, he had assured the receptionist in his roughened-up voice, they were just going to stay in for the evening.

After having made sure his bedroom was presentable, he goes back to the living room and plops down on the couch. He’d made the effort to put on one of his nicer sweaters, as if he was going on a date instead of paying a prostitute to masturbate on his bed while he watched.

With his hands between his knees, he sits hunched over, absentmindedly looking at the coaster in between the latest issue of the Military Review and a half-empty package of cigarettes on his coffee table. It takes the incessant buzzing of the doorbell to jolt him back into action.

His stomach’s knotted up and his throat is dry, and all of a sudden the thought strikes him that he should’ve bought some champagne or something.

Gabriel briefly observes the image of her standing in the hallway from the door camera on the monitor before buzzing her in. She’s wearing a simple gray overcoat and a tight skirt that peeks from underneath and barely touches her kneecaps. Her hair looks longer than it did on the pictures of her page, darker too.

“Hey,” he greets her once she came inside, giving her a firm handshake, “I, _uh_ , hope you didn’t have any trouble finding the place or something.”

Her lips furl into a polite, but stilted smile and he awkwardly crosses his arms, unsure how else to react, but she then answers calmly, “ _Non_ , _non_ , I didn’t have any trouble at all, mister Reyes, thank you for asking.”

“Okay,” he concludes softly, not knowing how else to continue the conversation; there was no need for a proper introduction after all, he’d read her profile and the escort service probably provided her with everything he filled in on the form.

In a sense, they already knew more about each other than they should.

.


	2. Chapter 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Second, I don’t want any of that master bullshit, don’t call me ‘sir’ either—”
> 
> Amélie folds her hands in her lap and inquires, “Do you object to ‘daddy’?”
> 
> This gives him pause and for a split-second, she thinks she found his achilles’ heel. While the company hadn’t given her much more information other than his name and address, she could tell by the scars edged across his face, by the smidgeon of wrinkles around his mouth and eyes, and the few silver strands in his dark mop of curls, that he was much, much older than her.
> 
> “Fuck,” it’s a breathless curse, but not a refusal.
> 
> She sees men skirt around their own issues all the time.
> 
> “Ah, but my accent doesn’t do it much justice, does it?” Chews on the inside of her cheek, before pressing onwards, one hand flat on the cushion next to her as she presses her cheek against her shoulder, “Doesn’t papa sound better?”
> 
> “I wanna hear you say papi,” his answer comes after he swallows reflexively, the bobbing of his adam’s apple something she observes with interest.
> 
> Amélie looks back at his face, failing to stop the corners of her mouth twitch into a satisfied smile, and practically purrs, “Papi. Papi sounds just about right, non?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter 1
> 
> Note: I will be going abroad at the end of this month so updates might be irregular, if not sporadic. I hope you'll enjoy this chapter regardless and that you're prepared to be patient with me.

.

Amélie absentmindedly tugs on the brass zipper of her coat as she glances around at what she can see of the inside of his apartment: the coat rack bench that’s painted a sleek gray and that serves as a separation between the entry hall and the living room, the large rectangular windows that seem to take up the entire wall, and the contrast of the paler furniture with the dark walls.

When he asks her if he can take her coat, she offers him a genuine smile, tugs the zipper down smoothly and steps out of the garment, heels clicking loudly on the parquet. She’s taught herself to walk around with her shoulders straight and her chin held high, and her posture doesn’t change when she stands in front of him with her hands folded in front of her lap.

“ _Merci_ ,” she says before she catches herself and corrects herself pointedly, “Thank you, I mean. You must excuse me, I’ve lived in Los Angeles for so long but I still slip into French from time to time, force of habit.”

The pronunciation of her words are still slanted by her accent, but she’s been told repeatedly by some of her clientele that it makes her sound more sophisticated, more sensual as well. It’s something she takes advantage of quite frequently. Tips are tips. Amélie tucks a strand behind her ear and looks him straight in the eyes.

“Yeah, it’s okay,” he answers as he scratches the base of his neck, but maintains the eye contact, continues “So, _uh_ , would you like something to drink before we start?”

She decides to humor him, because despite the unshaking certainty of his grizzly voice, there’s something endearingly awkward about him.

It’s in the way he stands, not knowing what to do with his hands, where to put them, and this while so many men before him have put their hands on her almost immediately.

After two years of whoring, Amélie’s become quite adept at spotting the first-timers. So she offers him a nod and follows him further into his apartment.

It’s a tidy place, simple but stylish, with bookshelves lining up the left wall, next to the fireplace and the transition from living room to kitchen was nicely done in the change of wallpaper color. He seems to prefer a monochrome scheme and she briefly wonders if that was why he asked her to wear black lingerie.

She takes a seat on the corner sofa when he motions her to sit down and daintily crosses one leg over the other, gazing at the potted geranium on the window sill. It looks well-cared for, with glossy white petals, a soil that’s still moist, just watered then, and located in the sunniest spot of the living room. There are more plants; two potted Easter cacti on an ancillary table and a white clay pot of African violets on the kitchen counter.

Funny, when she first saw him in the open doorway, she absolutely wouldn’t have had him pegged for a plant guy.

“What would you like? I can make you some coffee, tea too but I don’t got more than lemon and earl grey,” Gabriel says as he makes his way to the kitchen cabinets, his padded footfalls softly underscoring the cadence of his voice.

Her gaze falls on the military magazine on his coffee table, then the pack of cigs and the cleaned ashtray; the faint smell of detergent clouds her nostrils for a moment and the desire for a smoke corners her. Her cigarettes are still in the pocket of her coat however, and she doesn’t want to look inconsiderate by getting back up.

“Just a glass of water will be fine, mister Reyes—”

He interrupts her too quickly, “Gabriel, no reason to be formal.”

Amélie smiles despite herself and continues, making a point to pronounce his name like she would back in France, pinning the ‘l’ between the tip of her tongue and the back of her teeth, “Gabriel, I insist you call me Amélie, then. You have a lovely apartment by the way.”

There’s a stammer in his movement, standing in front of his open fridge with a ramrod spine, and judging by how the glance he casts at her over his shoulder, she can tell he’s unsure how to respond to the casual compliment.

Or perhaps, he would’ve preferred to have kept some sort of distance from her. She’s had a client before who loathed to call her by her name, because that would’ve made him cheating on his wife more real in his mind.

“Thanks.. You don’t mind if the water’s cooled, right?”

She regards him moving about in the kitchen, humming lowly, then answering, “Not at all. I hope you don’t mind but could I light a cigarette inside?”

With a curt thud, he places the glasses on the counter, uncaps the bottle and starts to pour.

“Yeah, no problem, you can take one from my pack if it’s your brand,” Gabriel replies, not looking up at her.

It isn’t, but she doesn’t want to appear ungrateful, so she lights one and settles back against the backrest, stroking the soft quilt on the cushion next to her with one hand. He comes back carrying the two tall glasses, walking in purposeful, disciplined strides, and puts them down on the coasters, then he sits down opposite to her in the armchair.

Amélie feels pinned by his gaze.

“It’s a bad habit I picked up from my late husband,” she explains before she takes a long drag, exhales, and continues conversationally, “I just can’t get rid of it no matter how hard I try.”

Gabriel nods slowly, inquiring, “I don’t mean to pry, but was he on active duty?”

“ _Non_ , he was an architect. He died in a car accident.”

This comes with a quirked brow, wondering what gave him the idea that her husband might’ve been a soldier or a police officer, but judging by the embarrassed, almost pained expression on his face, it seems he realized that he made some kind of mistake.

He shakes his head and brings a hand to his mop of curls, muttering, “ _Shit_ , I’m.. My condolences, it’s just that I’m so used to _dealing_ with these kind of…”

“It’s quite alright,” she interjects firmly, not wanting to make him feel even more uncomfortable.

The silence that follows after her statement gets broken up by him clearing his throat and taking a gulp of water. Amélie brings the cigarette to her pursed lips and inhales deeply. Her mouth leaves lipstick stains on the filter. His scrutiny makes her shift in her seat, tug self-consciously on the hemline of her skirt.

“I read on your profile that you don’t mind BDSM stuff,” his attempt at striking the conversation back up makes her tilt her head in curiosity.

She reaches for the glass, answering, “Not fully committed to the scene of course, but some clients have special preferences…” Her half-lidded eyes are concentrated on him as she takes a small sip, then continues, “And what do you prefer, Gabriel?”

“Control, I guess, _I_ ,” a curt pause as he tries to find the right words, unconsciously rubs his hands together and hunches over, still looking at her, “I want you to follow my commands to the letter, but if I cross a line or something, I want you to let me know, _immediately_.”

The emphasis on the last word isn’t lost on her and she freezes momentarily, barely aware that she’s still holding onto the glass after she put it back down on the coffee table. Amélie nods and takes another drag of the cigarette, the strong taste starting to grow on her; a wisp of smoke gets blown through her nostrils as she exhales.

“So, I figure this is the point where you establish a safeword,” Gabriel offers, easing back against the plush backrest of the armchair, still unsure of what to do with his hands.

Her mouth thins into a line as she considers what he just told her; rarely has one of her clients who was interested in BDSM or the likes been so straightforward about it.

They usually skirt around the issue, uncomfortable in their desire to be completely dominant over someone or to be completely submissive to someone, but as a stranger, she makes it easier for them to come to terms with it.

Gabriel seems exactly to know what he wants, but only just recently figured out how to come by it, or perhaps more correctly, only just recently _dared_ to come by it.

“ _Venin_ ,” Amélie makes sure to pronounce the word clearly, puts the cigarette out in the ashtray, “But I must remind you about the service’s policy regarding marking, branding and violence.”

“I know,” he replies with a strong sense of conviction, looking like he doesn’t even think of making a problem about the rules, even if his rugged features would give the suggestion he might.

She proffers him another polite smile and asks, “Would you like to get started now?”

His gaze flits from her face to the glass on the coffee table in front of her, his hands wrung together between his knees and his eyes are trained on her once again.

There’s an undeniable sense of authority in his voice when he says, “Finish your drink first.”

Gabriel’s transition from somewhat hesitant and awkward to self-confident and very much in control is seamless, and this translates not only in the authoritative tone of voice, but also in how he’s squared his shoulders and holds his chin up.

It dawns on her that in giving him her safeword and having explained the rules she abides by, he’s instantly fallen into step. Her eyes probably show her puzzlement because he gestures towards the glass.

“I’m going to lie down some ground rules of my own,” he starts in a matter-of-fact voice as he watches her take another sip, “First of, if you don’t use your safeword I’m going to assume you are going to comply with whatever I ask of you.”

Her tongue darts over the front of her teeth, to wipe off any accidental lipstick stains. There’s a curt **_thud_** when she places the glass back down on the table. Even the cold water couldn’t take away the strong taste of his cigarettes.

“Second, I don’t want any of that master _bullshit_ , don’t call me ‘sir’ either—”

Amélie folds her hands in her lap and inquires, “Do you object to ‘daddy’?”

This gives him pause and for a split-second, she thinks she found his achilles’ heel. While the company hadn’t given her much more information other than his name and address, she could tell by the scars edged across his face, by the smidgeon of wrinkles around his mouth and eyes, and the few silver strands in his dark mop of curls, that he was much, much older than her.

“ _Fuck_ ,” it’s a breathless curse, but not a refusal.

She sees men skirt around their own issues all the time.

“Ah, but my accent doesn’t do it much justice, does it?” Chews on the inside of her cheek, before pressing onwards, one hand flat on the cushion next to her as she presses her cheek against her shoulder, “Doesn’t _papa_ sound better?”

“I wanna hear you say _papi_ ,” his answer comes after he swallows reflexively, the bobbing of his adam’s apple something she observes with interest.

Amélie looks back at his face, failing to stop the corners of her mouth twitch into a satisfied smile, and practically purrs, “Papi. Papi sounds just about right, _non_?”

Gabriel regains his composure quicker than she anticipated, as if he wouldn’t even allow himself this small moment of weakness, but the effect of how she pronounced the word is still visible in his flared nostrils and in how he regards her with dilated pupils.

“Rule number three, you don’t touch me unless I give you permission… No _spur in the moment_ things. You don’t touch yourself either unless I fucking say so,” he licks his bottom lip here as if to emphasize something, “You got that?”

She has half a mind to push onwards and ask whether he’d take matters into his own hands to discipline her if she broke the rules, but decides not to take things too far right away.

When the escort service sent her on her first appointment with some businessman in his early forties, the advice she got was to try and get a repeat performance, an encore. Satisfy them but at the same time leave them wanting for _more_.

“Don’t make a habit of letting me repeat myself,” there’s a threatening edge to his tone of voice, but _in a good way_ , like a promise to get up to no good, “You got that, too?”

Her smirk’s sharp like a razor, and she uncrosses her legs, tugs on the neckline of her tight-fitting shirt and answers, “I understand, papi.”

It’s like she delivered the punchline of a joke perfectly, because the grin that overtakes his mouth is large, knowing — _showing off his teeth, edging the lines around his mouth a bit deeper into his dark skin_. Gabriel gets up and motions her to follow him to his bedroom with a wave of his hand.

The monochromatic color scheme continues in his bedroom, from the sleek black paintjob on his wardrobe to the white walls to the covers on his bed. He holds the door open for her as she lingers in the doorway for a short moment.

“Strip, fold your clothes and put’em on the rug, then go sit on the foot-end,” he orders as he stalks over to his wardrobe, and then takes out a couple of boxes, stacking them against his chest with one arm.

Amélie does as she’s told, kicking off her heels and unzipping her skirt, showing off the lace trimming on her panties, and all the while watching how he places the boxes one by one on the middle of the bed.

He picks the one with the dildo back up and starts to open the package slowly, fumbling with the carton lid before sliding it out with plastic and all.

“You can take whatever gets you off best,” Gabriel says after he’s gotten them out of their packages and placed the small bottle of lube on the nightstand.

Her bra falls down to the floor, leaving her completely naked dead-center in his bedroom, with her long hair curling around her small but perky breasts and her ribcage, the dark color of it contrasting with her pale skin.

She seats herself on the edge of the bed, crossing one leg daintily over the other, showing off that she’s comfortable in her nudity in how she keeps both of her hands by her sides, chest puffed out.

“Permission to speak freely,” Amélie requests, observing how he puts his large hands on the backrest of the chair in front of the desk and expertly spins it round on two legs so it’s facing the bed.

There’s a hush of silence that befalls the room as he sits down and hauls a hand through his dark curls. Gabriel tugs on his sweater and pulls it over his head, folds it meticulously on his lap and then gingerly places it on his desk.

Everything about the efficiency of his movements betrays the discipline in his military life.

 _And his hands of course,_ Amélie muses quietly as she awaits his response, _a pair of soldier’s hands, tough and coarse and not unscathed._

When he’s done with this almost ritualistic display, he gives her a curt nod.

“You’re paying me three fifty just to watch me get off?”

It seems her question came across as too blunt because he narrows his eyes, drops his hands between his knees out of habit and hunches forwards a bit, makes himself smaller while he shouldn’t.

He tilts his head and regards her, unsmiling, answers after a beat, “Yeah.”

“Wouldn’t a camgirl have been cheaper?” She prompts cautiously, afraid to misuse the liberty he’s permitted her for the time being.

In a low, hesitant tone of voice that matches the expression on his face, he replies, “It’s not the same.”

“ _Non_ , you’re right, it isn’t…” She tries to ignore the tremor in her own voice when she talks, a tremor that seems to trail down her spine now.

There’s no sense of tangible vulnerability in a chatroom like there is between these four walls, a chatroom where the other users type down their own commands and thoughts while the girl on camera follows her own script; spreads her legs and teases the head of the dildo over her labia and clit, throws her head back and moans loud enough for the mic to hear. Viewers remain at the mercy of the camera’s angle and whatever the girl wants to show.

But Amélie has a job to do right now so she leans backwards, props out her chest even further, tilts her head towards the ceiling and spreads her legs wide, asking coyly, “Is this position to your liking, _papi_?”

“Yeah, that’s, _uh_ , that’s great,” the breathless quality of his voice adds to how smoked-through it usually sounds, even more so when the next order’s given, “Go on then.”

She gropes for the dildo with one hand, leaning backwards, stretching out her arm, exposing the column of her neck. Strands of hair slide over her shoulder and fall to her back.

Her fingers bump against the soft, silicone toy, and her seductive gaze with half-hooded eyes trails down from the attentive expression on his face to the hand in his lap.

For starters, she brings the toy to her mouth and starts to slick the shaft and head, sliding the flat of her tongue from halfway to the top and back.

Amélie palms her crotch with her other hand, rubbing the heel of her palm against her clit hard. When she runs her hand up the curve of her pubic bone to spread her labia with her fingers to show off her pussy, the chair creaks loudly under his shifting weight.

Heavy breathing cushions the silence in the room, his, hers—breathing only until she pushes her thumb down on her clit and moans haggardly around the fake cockhead, open-mouthed, accidentally clanks it against her teeth.

She dips two fingers down her slit to lather them with her own slick, bucking her hips up, enjoying the smooth fabric of his sheets under her naked ass. They smell like they’ve been washed recently, clean and crisp. It dawns on her that he washed them in consideration for her.

Hyperaware of his gaze on her body, Amélie finds herself wetter than she expected, and while she prides herself on knowing what kind of person has what kind of kinks, she didn’t expect to revel in the exhibitionism this much.

With a soft squelching sound, she starts to work two fingers in her cunt while dragging the spit-slick tip of the dildo down her chest to her navel. Nostrils flared, chin up, teeth sunken into her bottom lip, Amélie teases her clit with the head of the toy.

“ _Yes,_ ” Gabriel’s raspy voice startles her a little, makes her rock her hips up against her own fingers; he draws out the ‘s’ in the word subconsciously and mutters, “Keep doin’ it just like that, baby.”

She almost doesn’t catch the endearment, soft-spoken as it was, but it prompts her to catch her perky tits between her arms and push them together, swaps her fingers out for the toy. It has a modest girth, but the difference in size makes her groan regardless.

Amélie wants to get off like this, wants to gush over his freshly-washed sheets and wants him to sleep under them tonight. Just the thought of Gabriel touching the wet spot she left behind with those large hands of his makes her tremble.

 _How long has it been since she last felt as selfish as she does in this moment?—it’s hard to think straight when her whole body’s on fire_.

“Wait,” he orders suddenly, and she stops fucking herself open, with the toy still halfway up her wet cunt.

Gabriel stands up straight, unbuttons his pants and pulls down the zipper, then he pushes them down to his ankles. He keeps his boxers on as he sits back down again. She unabashedly looks at the outline of his cock against the thin material of his underwear for a moment before bringing her gaze back to his face.

There’s a light flush on his cheeks and he rubs his hands over his muscled thighs in a display of self-consciousness. It’s only then that she notices that he has a few big scars there, the paler tissue contrasting with his darker skin tone.

Something clicks together in her mind and she stifles a gasp as a shudder goes through her spread-open thighs, silently pleading him with her half-lidded eyes to give her permission to move. Gabriel’s ashamed of his battle-scarred body, of himself and all the things that lie behind him in the past.

_And here he’s displaying a good portion of himself to her with as only demand she does the same._

He snakes one of those big hands of his into his boxers and starts to tug on his cock with a fist; the movement of the back of his hand straining against the fabric of his underwear, and a strip of skin and the tail-end of a happy trail visible from underneath the hemline of his shirt.

“Continue.”

That one word’s enough to make her keen in appreciation, head thrown-back and lips parted. She steadies her grip on the black, circular end of the toy as she pushes it deeper inside her pussy. Strokes her clit fast with two fingertips, loses herself in the soft squelching sounds of her own cunt and the heavy breaths that leave him.

Amélie’s close to cumming, can feel the heat pool down low in her belly, can feel the tell-tale spasms in her thighs, the curling of her toes, and all this warmth inside of her makes her that more aware of how cool the room temperature is on her bare shoulders. Her shoulders hunch together and her chin almost touches her clavicle, the curve of her spine bulb as she draws into herself.

 _S’il vous plaît_ , she wants to beg him out loud in her hoarse, fucked-out voice, _disez-moi c’est acceptable, donnez-moi ma petite mort, s’il vous plaît papi, s’il vous plaît._

He groans then, a rumble from deep within his chest caught between grit teeth and a set jaw, bucking his hips up, fucking into his fist faster. His eyes are still on her, his gaze a weight tangible on her sweaty body, on her slick cunt and the toy she pumps in and out of herself, but his mouth is a thin line, the muscles in his neck and arms and thighs drawn taut like a bowstring.

It’s too much.

Her thighs are quivering uncontrollably when she cums, something she’s never liked about herself in moments like these. Usually there’d be a client covering her with his own body, or keep her suspended on hands and knees, and before, _well_ , there’d been Gérard of course, and that was _different_.

But after she’s come down from the high, the openness of Gabriel’s bedroom and Gabriel himself as witnesses give her reason to feel vulnerable.

Amélie’s still panting when he squirts his load into his fist and underwear, his face scrunched up and his massive body boxed into itself, until the tension bleeds out of him and he kicks out his legs in front of him.

She doesn’t know what to do with the wet and used dildo, unwilling just to leave it on the sheets she came all over. Her thighs are moist when she rubs them together. It’s unfair of her to do this, but she brings her two fingertips to her mouth and licks them clean of her own slick.

Some startled noise, too close to a groan, too close to a _moan_ , that seems to come from the back of his throat breaks the silence apart.

“We’re done for tonight. You can take a shower if you want,” he offers shakily as he hauls his cum-stained hand out of his soiled underwear.

Her response isn’t intended to come across as inconsiderate, but she somewhat feels obliged to remind him that, “Technically, it would still be on the payroll.”

“That isn’t a problem,” He answers briefly, looking unconcerned as he stands up and kicks off his pants entirely, but there’s still a spell of hesitation about him as he drums his fingertips on the elastic of his boxers.

After a beat he tugs them down and steps out of them, trying to look unfazed. Her gaze falls on his flaccid, uncut cock; Gabriel doesn’t bother to trim his pubes apparently and they’re dark, thick and curly. She doesn’t mean to worry her lower lip with her teeth the way she does now, but she does so anyway.

It doesn’t cross her mind to think it strange that he doesn’t take off his shirt too, not when he seems to trust her enough to pull down his underwear already. Somehow it feels oddly uplifting considering he didn’t touch her once during the entire session.

“It’s this door to the bathroom,” he says as he walks over to the door and pushes it open to reveal the first glimpse of dark floor tiles, “You can, _uhm_ , make yourself at home and stuff. Towels on the rack are clean and washcloths are in the top drawer.”

She stands up straight and leisurely stretches her arms above her head, much more comfortable in her own skin than he seems to be in his shirt. Amélie picks her clothes up from the floor and walks past him to the open doorway.

“ _Merci_ , Gabriel,” the sincerity in her voice is matched by the look in her eyes.

He gives her a curt nod and says, “You’re welcome.”

Once she’s shut the door behind her, he dares to pull his shirt up and over his head, rolls his shoulder blades and starts to rub the back of his neck with one hand.

Thirteen years ago, when he was deployed near the Afghan-Pakistani border, his squad got caught up in a car bombing. It was a _fucking_ mess, chaos everywhere, people screaming and running and dying. McCree who was a rookie at that time ended up losing an arm, while he got lucky and merely sustained a third-degree burn on his right shoulder.

 _Still_ , Gabriel muses silently, _wouldn’t wanna scare Amélie off with a nasty as fuck scar like this one._

He cleans himself off with his used underwear, picks out a fresh pair of boxers, puts them on, and when he hears the shower water run, he makes his way to the hamper in the cramped laundry room. As soon as he gets back to the bedroom, he grabs a hoodie from his wardrobe and puts his pants back on.

With one cursory glance over the used dildo on the bed, he strides over to where the other sex toys are and starts to shove them back into their packaging.

From the corner of his eyes, Gabriel can’t help another look at the dildo on the foot-end of the bed, gleaming wetly under the lights. It’s there, the urge to pick it up and tease the flat of his tongue over her slick, taste what he doesn’t even dare touch.

He crams the vibe into the box and closes the lid, scolding himself for being so _goddamned_ pathetic. _Really, Reyes?—_ his thoughts are barbed, sharp-edged, _you pay the woman to fuck herself on your bed and now you wanna slobber all over the toy she used?_

 _Get a grip_ , Gabriel whispers the reproach under his breath once he’s plucked it up between two fingertips by the black end. Maybe it would be best to throw the toy into the sink and wash it clean there.

Lead us not unto temptation and all that.

Back in his living room, he collects their glasses too, stalks over to the kitchen and puts everything on the counter. Starts to run the tap and rinses the glasses and the sex toy. His fingers slide over the silicone shaft. He wonders if it’s necessary to use detergent or if the lukewarm water alone would suffice.

Soft footsteps pull him from his thoughts. Amélie comes out of his bedroom with her two pumps in hand, with her face clean of makeup, hair hanging damp over one shoulder and shirt slightly wet around the collar. Out of all the things to notice, he notices that her eyelashes are naturally long and dark, delicate.

“That was certainly refreshing,” she breaks the silence, a gentle smile curving the corners of her mouth upwards.

He suddenly realizes he’s still holding a dildo in his hands. Drops it like a child caught with a hand in the cookie jar. Winces when the clattering sound fills the room, bigger and louder than it actually is. Her smile doesn’t fade, _no_ , on the contrary, seems to stretch a bit further to expose a hint of teeth.

“It’s silicone, _c’est vrai?_ ” Amélie prompts, leans against the doorframe of his bedroom, with her arms crossed and her right foot playfully gliding up and down her left calf.

When he gives her a nod in response, she tilts her head back and advises, “If you have a dishwasher, you can put it in there. Or just use soap to clean it.”

“Thanks for the tip,” he replies, propping his elbows on the counter.

They regard each other for a short moment before she pushes herself off and walks into the living area like she owns the place. Gabriel hides a private smile behind his knuckles, simply watching her move about because it feels like he has all the time in the world. She drops her heels to the floor and slips her feet into them.

“I had a nice evening,” she murmurs softly, putting a lock of wet hair behind her ear as she stands at the junction of the counter with the wall.

There’s a _thank you_ on the tip of his tongue, but this simple platitude can’t encompass the gratitude he wants to express to her. What Amélie did for him exceeded his every expectation. He watches how she turns somewhat away from him, bringing one hand to cup the flower head of one of the African violets, fingertips gliding over the smooth petals

“It was great,” he voices his agreement, adds adamantly, “You were great.”

She chances a glance at him from the corners of her eyes. He’ll have the image of her on repeat in his mind for the rest of the night until the details dim and leave him wanting. When she lets go of the violet to scoot over to him, the flower head bops up and down.

From this close, her dark hair glints a wet black in the too bright lights of his kitchen. For the first time, he notices the small button of her nose and the way her lower lip protrudes slightly, bigger than the upper one. And from this close, he can smell a familiar waft of spices.

“I’m glad you’re satisfied,” the drawl of her accent gives the punctuation of the last word that bit of extra edge.

Gabriel can’t help but shirk back from the heady scent of his own shower gel on her. It drives an unsettling sense of belonging into the pit of his belly that he shouldn’t feel and he swears he could cut his heart on the sharp of her smile. He rubs his sweaty palms over the coarse fabric of his pants.

Their gazes cross and hold, and he swallows reflexively, admits freely, “If it’s all the same to you, I’d like to do it again sometime.”

Amélie balances her left elbow on the countertop and leans her chin onto her knuckles, regarding him with warmth in her eyes. The sincerity’s there on her face and in her voice when she says, “I look forward to it, Gabriel.”

His tongue lies tied up, heavy in his mouth. Some part of him— _that soft spot of his that made him hover around McCree when he first joined the squad_ — wants to offer her another drink, settle down on the sofa and just get to know her, but the pragmatic, sober part in the back of his mind tells him to say goodbye and escort her downstairs, haul her a cab if it’s necessary.  

“It’s getting dark out,” it sounds lame to his own ears, but he continues, “You’ll probably want to go home and rest up.”

Her brows arch upwards and she casts a glance over her shoulder to look at the night sky through the window. Gabriel takes the moment to appreciate the outline of her profile, the slope of her nose and the side of her neck.

“You’re right,” she murmurs when she turns back around to look at him, “What time is it exactly?”

Here she looks a tad uncomfortable, as if she’s embarrassed about the fact he’s going to have to pay her. It strikes him as endearing for some reason so he gives her a reassuring smile while he slips his phone out of the pocket of his pants.

“Nine fifty four, round it off to ten,” Gabriel tells her as he shows her the digits on the screen.

His background’s a picture of him, Ana and Jack during the latest New Year’s Eve party at Blackwatch’ HQ. They were pleasantly buzzed by that time, each having had their fair share of champagne. He’d even let McCree convince him to dance with Reinhardt to some eighties’ song he forgot the title of.

She’s smiling gently when he puts his phone back in his pocket, pushing herself off the counter and taking a few steps in the direction of the entrance hall. Her heels click softly on the parquet. Gabriel accompanies her to the door.

Once he’s helped her slip her arms into her coat and handed her purse over, he hovers somewhat nervously around her. Sticks his thumbs into his pockets and pulls at them.

Amélie buttons up and pops out the collar of her coat so her jawline’s hidden, all the while telling him, “You’ll get an invoice per email and then you can deposit the money to the agency’s account. If there are any _probl_ —”

“Can I tip you? Now, I mean,” Gabriel blurts out, interrupting her mid-sentence.

There’s humor in her voice, as if she’s actually charmed by the gesture, “You can.”

Her fingers glide over the edge of the collar down to the first button nestled above her clavicle. She pulls at her coat there, to make sure her neck’s covered up too. Some glossy strands of hair slip down her cheek. He tugs on his pockets harder, before he ends up doing something stupid like reaching out and putting them back behind her ear.

He’d want to empty his wallet in the palm of her hand, but settles for tipping her a hundred bucks. While they’re walking down the corridor to the elevator, they’re discussing mundane stuff like the weather and the city’s traffic. Her soft laughter rings throughout the hallway when he adds an anecdote about driving an army truck in Afghanistan.

Soon enough they’re standing at the parking spot of her car, under the street light. She’s rummaging through her purse for her keys. It’s a cloudy night, the kind of night where the gray of the clouds serves as a border against the dark blue of the sky. Gabriel props his hands in the pouch of his hoodie against the mild cold.

They’re muttering their goodbyes to each other while she’s unlocking her car. The taillights flare up in the darkness.

 “Hey, Amélie. Thanks again, for tonight I mean,” he pipes up when she’s rounding the front of the car, “Have a safe trip home.”

She opens the car door, ready to get in and start the engine, but his words give her pause and she answers with a slight smile, “You’re very much welcome. _Au revoir,_ Gabriel.”

“Yeah… Bye,” he adds somewhat awkwardly, feeling forlorn standing there on the sidewalk.

He keeps watching until the car’s at the end of the street with his hands in the pouch of his hoodie until she signals to take the turn left and drives off.

During the trek back to his flat and the rest of the evening, he’s unable to get her out of his head.

.


	3. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> His mind’s already back in his apartment, at around half past eight, when Amélie’s sipping from a glass of water or wine, or maybe a cup of coffee, on his couch, with one cigarette between her index and middle finger and a wisp of smoke hanging around her head. Then onwards to the bedroom, where he’ll have her sit down against the headboard and use the remote-controlled vibe to drive her crazy.
> 
> Somewhere halfway the stroll to the restaurant, Gabriel notices a small tailor shop wedged in between a parking lot and a lawyer’s office. It has a rather plain façade aside from the large sign on top. He tugs on the strap of his sport bag as he peers inside through the small, barred windows. There are some sewing supplies, folded strips of fabric and plastic cases with buttons, but what catches his attention is the one scarf on display. It’s short, triangular and dark blue with a pale floral print.
> 
> For some reason, he can’t shake the sudden, impulsive want to see that short scarf tied around Amélie’s eyes like a blindfold.

.

Gabriel presses the phone against his ear with his shoulder while he’s refilling his plastic watering can. It’s shaped like a toy elephant and a faded green color. He turns off the tap once the water starts to gush over the handle that’s supposed to be an elephant’s tail and over his knuckles. As the dial tone keeps beeping in his ear, he mutters irritably under his breath: _pick up your fucking phone now, Morrison._

Earlier this afternoon, when he was checking the latest press releases about international arm deals on his tablet, he came across a statement from an Indonesian motor company about a new domestic AFV. It was the picture of the latest turret system they would incorporate into the design that captured his attention.

_Torbjörn was working on one of those_ , he thought to himself with a hint of suspicion before he’d started to read the article.

There weren’t many details about the combat capabilities of the model, but Gabriel’s worked with Torbjörn and his team in the R&D department for ten years now, so he’d recognize the signature build of their gunhouses everywhere.

He’s been trying to get in touch with Jack for over fifteen minutes, since the emails and texts he sent throughout the afternoon remained unanswered. So far, the line was busy, but the rhythmic beeping of the dial tone reassures him that he might get lucky this time.

“I take it you read the Tata motors announcement,” Jack says in greeting, his voice’s scratchier than usual, showing signs of exhaustion.

Gabriel holds onto his phone with one hand while he nudges the flowerheads of the African violets aside with the snout of the watering can, muttering, “Looks like we’ve got a fucking leak on our hands, Morrison.”

“I’m looking into it,” he assures gruffly, followed by the sound of him taking a sip of something. Coffee most likely.

“You better.”

He waters his violets and shuffles over to the potted geranium on the windowsill, asking, “So what’s most likely at this point? Breach from outside or someone spilling the beans?”

“This is the first break I’ve had in five hours, Reyes, let me enjoy my goddamned latté for a moment.” There’s no bite to his statement, just the type of banter they’ve thrown back and forth ever since they met.

Chuckling in response, he puts his watering can down on the shelf and checks over the white petals for any signs of wilting.

“Liao said there wasn’t a noticeable increase in hacking attempts the last few days and fuck, we’re not the DNC, we got quite the system working for us,” Jack finally speaks up again.

He continues somberly, “If it’s a high-ranking insider, the new turret systems possibly aren’t the only designs compromised.”

“How’s Torbjörn holding up?” Gabriel asks as he tilts up a flowerhead with two big fingertips.

_Have to fertilize in three days, can’t forget,_ he reminds himself as he reaches for the watering can. It’s still fairly sunny outside; the light falls into the room and warms the back of his hand. He’ll go to Phys. Ed and ask Soraya about that one hour workout, then drop by Pine & Crane for a bite. That should leave him with enough time to tidy up when he gets back home.

Jack clears his throat and answers, “Well, he locked himself in his office for three hours when he found out. Threatened to fire his entire staff. Threatened to fire me too at one point.”

His smug grin probably translates into his tone of voice when he replies, “Should put his money where his mouth is.”

“When did you sprout a sense of humor, Reyes?” Jack quips easily, his words cushioned by the loud echo of his footsteps.

Rolling his eyes, Gabe answers dryly, “I heard it was fashionable a while back and decided to get one. You sent me Jesse’s performance record yet?”

There’s a lot of white noise on the backdrop; Jack’s heavy footfalls, the crunch of a styrofoam cup, and chatter that gradually gets louder before growing fainter again. While Gabriel walks back over to the kitchen, pours the remaining water into the sink and stows the watering can in the cabinet, Morrison keeps the conversation going.

“I was going to this morning, but then all this shit happened and it slipped my mind. He’s really getting into his new role as a teacher, at least Ana said so last time we talked. But aren’t you coming to the training facility next month, anyway?”

His palm curves over the sharp angle of the cabinet door; he steadies himself on the tips of his toes and worries the inside of his cheek between his teeth, thinking about the flight he should book. Amari’s going to give him her couch to sleep on, so there’s no reason to look for a hotel.

“Yeah,” he concedes as he stands up straight again, continuing, “But I still want to read the file. Preferably _before_ I leave, Morrison.”

It’s a relief to hear the man bark out a laugh, means the stress hasn’t eaten away at his mood entirely. There’s the faraway click of a door being closed. Gabe supposes he’s just gotten back to his office. He pushes his bedroom door open and enters, making a beeline for his wardrobe.

Jack replies, “I’ll send it to you in a few…”

Before Gabriel has the chance to interrupt him, he tacks on, “And I’ll keep you updated on the leak too. You’re almost done with the risk assessment, right?”

“Analyzed most of the raw data. I have two guys keeping taps on local media reports for meta, so I’ll forward it asap with translations of the relevant articles,” he says as he leans against the open door of his wardrobe.

He doesn’t get more than a tired hum as response, and the silence in Morrison’s office emphasizes the buzz of the traffic from the intersection at Tyson Boulevard coming through the open windows. Gabriel can practically smell the exhaust and it takes him back to when he still had an office in HQ: the vertical blinds, the white coffee cups from the machine down the hall, the monitors on his desk and the squeak of his leather chair.

Sometimes he misses the mundaneness of the routine back in Virginia, but he doesn’t regret relocating to LA, relocating back _home_.

“How’s therapy been treating you?” Jack asks, the usual gruffness in his voice blunted around the edges, “New guy any good?”

Rubbing the back of his right leg with his left foot, he lets his gaze fall over the brightly-colored package of the bluetooth remote control vibrator he really wants Amélie to use tonight on the bottom shelf of his wardrobe, wedged between the box of the other sex toys and his Nike sport bag. He didn’t even know it was possible to have a wireless vibe, let alone one you could control with your phone.

Force of habit, but he swiped his browser history after the purchase.

“I’ve been going on weekly appointments for two months now. Therapist’s some fresh out of college Buddhist type. He told me to get some plants and we talk about them. Well, more like we talk _through_ them to be honest,” he explains as he shifts through the coat hangers in his closet.

His hand falls on a coat hanger with both a tank top and a training jacket. As he takes it out and puts it on the bed, Jack whistles lowly and prompts, “Any noticeable improvement?”

“Sleeping’s gotten a _fuckload_ easier,” Gabriel says as he bends over to pick up his sport bag, plops it on the mattress and rummages through one of the drawers to check for a clean pair of socks.

“But listen,” he continues as he puts his clothes into the bag, “I’m having company over soon so I gotta go, don’t forget to send me all the stuff I need, old man.”

Jack makes a noise at the back of his throat that’s somewhere between offended and annoyed, followed by a screeching sound, probably the wheels of his desk chair. He retorts, “I thought you were first one of us to get gray hair. Reinhardt doesn’t count.”

“You’re full of shit. And of course, Reinhardt doesn’t count. Did he ever have another hair color? But at least I ain’t a silver fox like you and Ana,” he punctuates his statement with a bark of laughter.

“Keep me updated, Morrison,” Gabriel answers easily and cuts the call once Jack said his goodbye.

He puts his phone back into his pocket and walks over to his bathroom to get a pair of towels and his bottles of shower gel and shampoo. He’ll take a cab to the gym and afterwards walk to Pine & Crane, then take another cab to head onwards back home from there. It’s a half an hour walk from the gym to the restaurant and it might help calm his nerves for tonight.

Once he’s by the front door, he picks up his running shoes from the coat rack bench, dumps them into his bag, slips into a pair of oxfords and ties them neatly. Gabriel thinks he has a nice casual chic look going on so he’s not going to bother to change after he gets home. Self-consciously, he hopes Amélie might like the outfit, but thoughts like these only get his stomach to act up.

Routine cushions the mild anxiety he gets from the customary bustle of the city; it’s gotten nice and easy to call a cab and wait for it to arrive on the edge of the curb. When he first returned from Afghanistan, he couldn’t stand being in a supermarket or out on the street for longer than five minutes. But ever since he found some places he felt comfortable with, going out wasn’t so bad anymore.

His cab driver is a polite but quiet Nigerian who allows the music on the radio to fill the silence between them. Gabriel contents himself with watching the ongoing traffic and the buildings they pass by, absentmindedly listening to the songs and the ads.

Time goes by quickly once he’s started on the workout Soraya outlined for him; she’s put him on the stairmaster for twenty minutes and the treadmill for another twenty, got him on a three-round circuit of jumping jacks and makes him skip rope for the final ten minutes. After stretching and showering, he’s off to the Pine & Crane.

His mind’s already back in his apartment, at around half past eight, when Amélie’s sipping from a glass of water or wine, or maybe a cup of coffee, on his couch, with one cigarette between her index and middle finger and a wisp of smoke hanging around her head. Then onwards to the bedroom, where he’ll have her sit down against the headboard and use the remote-controlled vibe to drive her crazy.

Somewhere halfway the stroll to the restaurant, Gabriel notices a small tailor shop wedged in between a parking lot and a lawyer’s office. It has a rather plain façade aside from the large sign on top. He tugs on the strap of his sport bag as he peers inside through the small, barred windows. There are some sewing supplies, folded strips of fabric and plastic cases with buttons, but what catches his attention is the one scarf on display. It’s short, triangular and dark blue with a pale floral print.

For some reason, he can’t shake the sudden, impulsive _want_ to see that short scarf tied around Amélie’s eyes like a blindfold.

After a deep breath, Gabriel musters up the courage to push the door to the small shop open and go inside. Customers are announced by the curt tinkle of a bell. There’s an elderly lady sitting behind the glass counter on a bar stool, hunched over to stitch up a tear in a golden plissé skirt with needle and thread in the hand. She looks up at the sound and glances at him with surprisingly sharp eyes.

“How may I help you, sir?” Her voice’s hoarse, and she scrapes her throat self-consciously, giving him a smile that makes the wrinkles around her mouth stand out.

It’s quiet inside the shop, aside from the soft whirl of the ventilation fan in the ceiling. He wrings his hands as he takes in his surroundings. There are suit jackets on coat hangers lined up on his right, a small glass cabinet with a collection of cuff links and buttons and brooches on his left, and right in front of him, behind the counter, there’s a bar with examples of fabrics. While Gabe studies the place, the elderly lady silently and diligently continues with her needlework.

He decides he likes this place, it has a certain rustic feel to it that he can appreciate.

“That scarf with the flower print on display,” he starts, swallows reflexively. “Is it for sale?”

Tilting her head back, she regards him with raised brows—two thin, drawn-on lines— puts down her needle and thread, and answers, “Why yes, it is actually.”

With some effort, she lifts herself off her barstool and waggles over to the display cabinet in front of the window. Her nimble fingers stroke the metal ring of keys she’s attached to the belt around her waist. Gabriel watches how she counts down to the right one on touch and picks it out to unlock the thin glass door.

“Silk twill,” she explains as she holds the scarf out to him to touch. “It’s second-hand so you can buy this with a discount.” He can’t place her accent, but there’s something special about the way she pronounces the ‘s’.

It’s soft but durable, he confirms as he gently clenches the fabric in his large fists. Long enough to wrap around Amélie’s head and tie a knot at the back. He’s grateful the woman doesn’t try to persuade him to buy the scarf right away, but gives him the time and space to decide on his own.

“I’ll take it.”

He asks for a plastic bag because he wouldn’t dare to put the scarf inside his Nike bag with his sweaty clothes. Still fumbling with his wallet, he mumbles a goodbye to the elderly lady and pulls the door open, hardly noticing the loud ringing of the bell. Once outside, he revels at the feeling of the cool breeze through his damp hair and heads off to the Pine & Crane.

Since he’s a regular, somebody from the staff—a Brazilian guy with dreads named L cio he hasn’t seen around much before, immediately takes him to a free two-person table near the bar. It’s not too crowded inside: just a few patrons sitting closer to the entrance.

This close to the kitchen, the smell of boiling oil’s overpowering, especially when the revolving door opens.

Lúcio fills the silence with chatter as he hands him the menu and the wine chart, but instead of rattling off the recommendations and the chef’s dish of the day, he asks him about his day.

“Went to the gym,” Gabe replies gruffly as he settles his sport bag and the small plastic bag with the scarf next to him on the floor. Glancing at the selection of wines, he mutters under his breath, “Staying in tonight, got company over.”

Small talk really isn’t his forte, but the waiter has this spontaneity that’s hard to ignore, it’s in the way he talks and looks at people with those big expressive eyes of his.

“Cool,” he answers, smiling and tapping his pen against his notebook. “Friends, family or maybe a special someone?”

Gabriel thumbs at the corner of the wine chart, trying to look like he’s not sincerely mulling the question over in his head. He could simply reply that it wasn’t anyone’s business, but the sincerity on the waiter’s face prevents him from being his usual blunt self.

_Think about your plants_ , his therapist would say, _and treat others like you’d treat them._

“She’s not _that_ someone special yet.” It’s one of the most diplomatic answers he’s ever given in his life and the thought gives him cause to smirk somewhat smugly to himself.

Lúcio takes his order and walks to the kitchen with a spring in his step like he’s dancing to a song, dreadlocks bouncing against his shoulders and the knot of his apron threatening to come undone. Dinner goes by quickly and before Gabriel realizes it, he’s standing outside on the sidewalk with a cigarette between his lips, waiting for his cab back home. He adjusts the strap of his sports bag slung over his shoulder as he shifts his weight on his other foot.

After an uneventful cab ride with a surly driver who could barely speak any English, he finds himself back in the entry hall of his apartment.

He takes off his oxfords and sets them back into the coat rack bench, then heads off to the small laundry room to dump his sweaty workout clothes into the hamper and to put his running shoes next to the washing machine. His Nike bag goes back into the wardrobe, but he takes out his bottles of shampoo and shower gel first.

Casting one last glance at the inside of his bedroom, Gabriel moves over to the bathroom and starts to brush his teeth. He doesn’t want his breath to smell like onion and cigarette smoke when Amélie’s over. Soon enough, he’s hovering awkwardly in front of his wardrobe again.

Hesitation makes him worry his lower lip between his teeth as he takes the packaged sex toy out of the closet and turns it over in his hands to glance over the words on the back. Sighing, he opens the carton lid of the box to get the vibe free.

It’s not as small in the palm of his hand as he originally thought, but it’s smooth and somewhat cold to the touch. He leaves the charging cable in the box, but takes out the manual to set up the connection between his phone and the vibe.

The picture of himself, Jack and Ana he put as a screensaver shines bright in front of his eyes before he goes to bluetooth settings.

He then puts the vibe on the foot-end of the bed, but the toy seems lost amongst the blankets, hard to be found. Biting his thumb, he looks around to find a better spot to put the vibe on, somewhere that doesn’t make the entire thing look like an offering of some sorts.

After a moment of thinking, he settles for the top of the desk, but the scarf he hides away in one of the drawers.

Until that decisive moment his doorbell buzzes, he keeps himself busy: he stacks his military magazines together on the coffee table, empties his ashtray, rearranges the cushions in his corner sofa and puts his well-worn copy of the Art of War back on the bookshelf.

He’s at the door in an instant, watching Amélie stand in the hallway through the monitor screen; she’s wearing her gray overcoat again, but instead of a skirt, she opted for a pair of tight, black pants.

“Hey,” Gabriel greets loudly, and upon realizing how his nervous excitement translates in the volume of his voice, he repeats himself more softly, “Hey, come in.”

Amélie watches amusedly how he wipes the palms of his hands on his pants and crosses his arms in front of his chest, standing aside to let her enter, and she smiles as if she’d heard a joke only she understands.

The staccato sound of her high heels on the floorboards seems to echo onwards throughout his entire apartment, chasing out the silence.

“ _Bonjour,_ Gabriel. How have you been?” She asks conversationally as she hands him her purse and starts to unbutton her coat.

He hangs her purse by its long, thin strap on a clothing peg, helps her take off her coat and answers, “Okay, I guess. Got some stressful news today, but, _uhm_ , nothing they can’t handle back at HQ.”

He stares at her profile for a second or two before it dawns on him that he didn’t inquire after her, “And you?”

“I’ve kept,” she leaves a purposeful pause and briefly purses her lips, continues, “ _Busy_.”

“ _Oh_ ,” he exclaims as he puts away her coat in the rack, relieved to have something to do with his hands. “Are you stressed out about something?”

She walks over to the window, the swing of her hips hypnotic, and casts a glance at him from over her shoulder when she’s standing still, hugging herself. Her smile’s delicate, pretty like only frail things such as lace and glass can be.

“We all have bills to pay, don’t we?” It’s clear in how she evades direct eye-contact with him that she doesn’t really want to have this conversation, no matter how honeyed her words may sound.

So, Gabe decides not to press, even if some part of him wants to interrogate her, find and dissect and solve her problem like he’s done so many times before in far more hostile surroundings, for far more dangerous situations.

It’s an itch sometimes, all those habits he picked up in the past have become instinctual, muscle memory. He comes to stand next to her, watching how she inspects the white petals of the potted geranium with the careful brush of her fingertips.

“I bought this one a month ago,” he begins, “I had no clue how to take care of a plant, but my, _ahem_ , therapist thought it might help me.”

“ _Avec_ —with what?” Amélie prompts, looking at him from the corner of her eyes with furrowed brows.

Gabriel tries to give a reassuring smile and answers, “Coping. With all the things, I’ve seen and done and... Back in Afghanistan, I mean.”

She hums in acknowledgement and turns around to lean against the window sill; her high ponytail swaying back and forth against her shoulders, her eyes half-hooded and with the first two buttons of her almost transparent blouse unbuttoned, her sharply-defined collarbones are on display.

“You know.” Her tone of voice is light, incompatible with the intensity of her gaze, never straying from his own. “I believe you’re a very gentle man, Gabriel.”

He makes a startled sound that comes from the back of his throat and involuntarily digs his fingers into his upper arms, backpaddling, “Thanks, but I haven’t always been—”

“ _Je sais._ ”

There’s understanding in her expression and she emphasizes the meaning of her words with a kind smile. “You’re also very firm when needed. I’ve noticed.”

Trying to steer the topic of conversation away from himself, he offers for them to move. “Would you like to sit down? Have a drink, maybe?”

“I’d love to,” Amélie answers, tugging on the right sleeve of her blouse. “ _Merci._ ”

They settle into the same routine as the previous evening they spent together: he offers her a glass of cooled water from the fridge and she lights up a cigarette from his pack, looking off to the side.

From where he’s standing at the kitchen counter, the sight of her profile against the dying sunlight outside—the button of her nose, the outline of her mouth and her chin, the way her ponytail falls— makes him pause for a moment, just appreciating her on his couch.

“Here you go,” he mutters as he puts the glass on a coaster in front of her, before sitting down in the armchair.

Wisps of smoke rush between her pursed lips as she exhales, fanning out around her jawline. Gabriel sinks into the cushion of the fauteuil and digs his nails into the plush of the armrest, rolling his shoulders as he tries to relax. She looks up at him from under her long lashes as she leans in to pick up the glass.

“That rough a day?” Amélie asks, her accent ringing through in how she pronounces the ‘r’ of _rough_.

He tilts his head back, staring up at the woodwork of the ceiling, and chuckles lowly. The sound of her putting the glass back on the coaster dulls the silence of the living room.

“Could’ve been worse. Workout was intense but that’s how I like ‘em,” he answers before angling his neck so he can look back at her, continuing, “Do you hit the gym often?”

There’s something amusing about how she quirks a brow at him, with the cigarette between her pouty mouth and a light haze of smoke floating off to the side of the room.

“I mean you look great, no, you look _amazing_ ,” Gabriel explains quickly, hands moving to emphasize his words. “So, I was just wondering…”

Amélie exhales slowly, a slight smile tugging on the right corner of her mouth as she continues to watch him splutter.

“I used to figure skate before I moved to America, but I had to give that up, unfortunately. I go jogging quite often, but it’s been so hectic at work recently…,” she trails off, lightly shaking her head as she taps a spine of ash into the ashtray.

Gabriel folds his nervous hands in his lap, mashing his knuckles together instinctively, and asks if she has another job. Her previous frustration about paying the bills pops up to the forefront of his mind again. It’s possible she has money troubles, he figures, she’s a young widow after all. His pensiveness must’ve translated into his expression because she tries to soothe his worries with the soft tone of her voice.

“My main occupation—” Her accent completely botches the pronunciation of the word, but it reminds him of how his mother would’ve said it so he can’t bring himself to care, rather enjoys the strange familiarity.

“ _Excusez-moi_ , but it’s difficult to explain,” Amélie apologizes with an awkward laugh, reaching for the glass of water again. “Essentially, I handle the online customer service for Zara. _Vous le connaissez_? The clothing chain?”

There’s one in the shopping mall downtown if he recalls correctly, trying to remember if it was there that he bought that ashen blazer last summer. She finishes her drink and snubs the cigarette in the ashtray. Outside, the horizon’s a pallet of pinks and reds, dying down into darkness. He involuntarily taps his right index onto the back of his left hand.

“Must be busy,” he muses out loud, looking straight at her. “Are you, _uhm_ , you know, strapped for cash?”

She recoils, hiding herself away in the plush cushion of the corner sofa, almost like a skittish animal would try to find shelter from something that startled it. Her eyes are open-wide and her lips are slightly pursed into an unspoken ‘o’. But just before he can stammer an apology, Amélie relaxes, uncrosses her legs and puts her hands next to her sides.

“Most of clients wouldn’t bother asking me something like this.” It sounds like she’s waving his question away.

“ _Non_ , I am not strapped for cash…” There’s a hint of uncertainty in the way she says the expression, but she continues, “I just have to pay for my house, my car, my clothes, _etcetera_. Life isn’t cheap and I like some luxury.”

The corners of her mouth are straining under the smile she tries to fake. Somewhat flustered, Gabe pretends not to notice, but the nonchalance she’s aiming for falls flat in its portrayal. He nods politely, absentmindedly scratching the back of his left hand.

“Sorry,” he mumbles, picking apart her body language, fretting with his hands. “I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable. It’s just—”

With a gesture of her hand, Amélie interrupts him airily, “The stigma of being a _prostituée_.”

“Yeah, didn’t mean to fall into clichés,” he mutters apologetically.

Rubbing her collarbone with her thumb, she says that it’s okay, that he shouldn’t worry about it anymore. Her smile’s more genuine when she tells him that she appreciates the sentiment behind his words.

“ _See?_ I was right. You really are gentle, _Gabriel_.”

Whenever Amélie pronounces his name, he’s amazed by how soft, how delicate it can sound, as if he’s been stripped of all his rough edges and sharp corners.

He gets up from the armchair, walks around the coffee table with the stack of military magazines, the empty glass and the ashtray, and offers her a hand to stand up. Her hand’s so unlike his own; without scars, well taken care of, and he has no doubt that if he brings his palm to his nose, he’ll smell the lingering fragrance of her hand cream on his skin.

They head over to the bedroom, but before Gabriel opens the door for her and lets her go inside, he turns around to face her; his expression schooled into a serious one. Behind her, the living room is caught in the darkness of the evening outside, save for his potted geranium with its pale, almost ghastly white petals.

“Repeat your safeword for me.” He demands her firmly, settling down in his authoritative role.

She breathes in through her nose, her nostrils flare briefly, and then she exhales again, with her shoulders sagging.

“ _Venin_ ,” Amélie reaffirms, chancing a glance at him from her peripheral.

He pushes the door open and she walks in, chin held high and strides purposeful. It gives him the entertaining notion he’s watching royalty enter his bedroom.

Feeling more at ease than the previous time he invited her over, he makes use of the opportunity to _really watch_ her; from the form-fitting pants she’s wearing to the blouse neatly tucked in around her waist to the high-heeled sandals; but also, how she moves, the sway of her hips and the way her long hair falls to her ass.

“Strip down, fold your clothes and put them at the foot of the bed,” Gabriel orders curtly, leaning against the desk and crossing his ankles.

For the first time, he’s aware of the weight of his phone in the pocket of his blazer and the reason for this awareness lies innocuously on the flat surface of his desk; pink and smooth and ready to be used.

Amélie sits down on the foot-end of the bed to zip out of her sandals; they make a soft thud when they unceremoniously fall over onto the floor.

With nimble fingers, she starts to unbutton her sheer blouse; the hollow between her collarbones caught under the shadow of her chin. His breathing becomes labored when the valley of her breasts gets exposed, framed by the lace of her bra. She shifts around, untucks her blouse and continues to unbutton until the garment falls open entirely.

There’s something incredibly sensual about how she lifts her hips and pulls her pants down over her ass and then further down her long legs, Gabriel thinks to himself. Her panties are see-through, topped off with lace trimming. They’re the next to go as she hooks her thumbs under the elastic. Amélie maintains eye-contact as she leisurely slides them off.

Gabriel follows her every moment with attentive eyes, taking in the sight of her slowly pushing the straps over her shoulders and down her upper arms, of her unhooking her black bra.

She’s completely bare then, head tilted to the right, daintily holding the unfurled bra between her thumb and index finger. He subconsciously wets his lower lip when she goes along to collect her clothes, folds them and puts them on the floor at the end of the bed. Her long hair fans out over her lower back when she bends over.

“Go sit at the headboard,” he orders when she’s finished, drumming his fingertips onto the flat surface of the desk.

Amélie obeys wordlessly, crawling over the mattress and sitting against the sturdy dark headboard of the bed. Her legs are spread, her head tilted back to the wall; the column of her throat bared like a sacrifice. Something heady, hot blossoms behind his ribcage: it’s a strong sense of authority, of dominance.

He opens the drawer without turning away from her, patting his palm against the desk until he finds the handle. Taking the silk scarf in one hand and the vibe in the other, he pushes himself off and walks over to the nightstand. His footsteps sound too loud in contrast to her sharp, punctuated breathing, to his own.

“Hold out your hand,” Gabriel says as he stands next to her, resisting the urge to touch her.

It’s easy to tell by her wide, inquisitive eyes that she’s wondering about something, especially in how she looks at the pink vibe in the palm of her vibe and then looks back at him.

“You have permission to speak freely.”

Amélie furrows her brows when she asks, “Where’s the controller?”

“I have it,” he answers, picking his phone out of his pocket with a small smirk; the screen lights up with the picture of him and his friends at the New Year’s Eve party.

He slips the phone back in his pocket and takes the ends of the scarf in both of his hands, showing his intention as well as the silky thing off, saying, “Sit up straight, now.”

Her anticipation translates into the slight tremble of her shoulders, into the shaky way she draws breath when Gabriel wraps the scarf around her eyes. He’s careful not to tie the knot too tight underneath her ponytail.

“Safeword?” He asks after he’s put more distance between them, trying to keep his hands still.

Leaning back against the wall and closing her fingers over the toy, Amélie responds softly, in an exhale, “ _Venin._ ”

“Good, now let’s get started.”

.


	4. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “I have a question.” Her accent colored the importance of the last word more than the weight of her stare could. “If you would indulge me, Gabriel?”
> 
> He puts the cap back on the jug, screwing it back on tighter than he probably intended if the way his biceps strain under the fabric of his blazer are any indication. She watches his hands intently, especially the dark blotting on his knuckles that she’d just noticed back on the bed.
> 
> “Yeah sure.” There’s something gravelly about his voice, she muses as she observes him turn away to put the gallon of milk back into the fridge, tapping two fingertips against her cheekbone.
> 
> Gabriel must’ve noticed because he swallows reflexively, trying to get rid of the extra layer of thickness to his voice as he hesitates for a moment, one hand on the open door of the fridge.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> without further ado~

.

Amélie gently outlines the shape of the vibrator with cautious fingertips: the bottom’s heavy and smooth, and when she traces the pad of her thumb down the inside, she can feel a small bump; there’s an antenna too, that seems to be curved like a spine, ending in a ribbed, bulbous end that she could easily clench in the joint of her thumb.

Light filters through the fabric of the scarf, giving the impression she might discern the contour of Gabriel’s body if he would directly stand in front of her, his silhouette chiseled out by the light. When she hears him sigh deeply, she squeezes the toy in reflex, to try and mold the material to the hollow of her hand, leaving the lines of her palmprint in memento.

“Go work yourself up.” Authority colors his tone of voice, smoking the edges through with such an intensity a shiver runs over her naked back.

With the soft sounds of him slowly, meticulously undressing on the backdrop—the unbuckling of his belt, the thuds of his feet when he steps out of his pants, the dull  _plop_  of the mattress when he sits down— Amélie starts to massage her thighs with one hand.

Her breathing’s shallow, quick-paced when she spreads her outer lips with two fingers and pinches her clit between them. Stabs of heat bleeds open in the pit of her stomach.

It’s a somewhat different sensation with sight stolen from her; as if she’s suddenly turned skittish to her own touch, leaning into the pressure of her fingers against her clit as she would if it was his palm curved over her cunt instead.

She can hear him shift, probably turning around to face her and she imagines him leaning over her outstretched legs, putting his palm flat between her knees.

_But that’s just wishful thinking on her part_.

Her teeth edge over her bottom lip, worrying; her chest heaves and falls with a shaky breath. Amélie teases one finger over her slit, two fingers then, grinding the heel of her palm against her clit. It won’t take much longer for her to get nice and wet, she knows and squeezes the toy in her hand hard.

“That’s it,” he purrs his appraisal, doling out a compliment that makes her arch her back, “Good girl, so good for me.”

The knowledge that Gabriel’s close and vulnerable spurs her on to grind against her clit faster, rougher; he’s so  _accidentally_  close she could brush her leg against his bare back or settle her knee between his shoulder blades. One long-drawn moan spills from her lips when she thinks about initiating skin to skin contact, but the threat of being disciplined by him keeps her grounded to the mattress.

Slowly pushing one finger inside her cunt to the knuckle, she tips her head back against the wall and furrows her brows, unable to focus on anything else but the feeling of her own skin, of the pressure she exerts herself.

Aside from a glimpse of light filtering through the fabric of the scarf, there’s nothing she can see, so the noise of Gabriel moving sounds more powerful than it really is, even in the dead silence of the bedroom.

             _An image of him shuffling over the mattress to sit next to her against the headboard pops into her mind; a waft of his hot breath falling over her clavicle, the scrape of his beard against her right shoulder, and then his palm drifting from her hip to her breasts…_

Her balled hand trails in between the valley of her breasts past her navel, down to her abdomen while she’s fingering herself open with two fingers now. Little sighs fall from her open mouth, stuck on the  _oh_ she can’t bring herself to voice. Her mind’s too fogged up.

When Amélie started whoring, she had the treacherous habit to imagine her clients as Gérard; conscientiously picking apart their appearance, their manners and the way they treated her, like she was holding a scalpel and drawing thick, bloody lines between them and her husband.

Coping mechanism, she guessed in hindsight, to prove to herself that there would always be a division between the man she loved and the men she allowed to love her body.

During the span of two years, she gradually learned that there was no shame in enjoying the company of her clients, in enjoying the things they did to her. Maybe, she sometimes muses over a glass of merlot at night, she’s cut herself into so many pieces over the years that she managed to separate her heart from her body.

Even cocooned in the relative warmth of his bedroom, there’s a slight chill in the wake of her knuckles. She rubs the sensitive skin around the sharp handle of her right hip and down the dip of her thigh; on the cusp of adding a third finger.

_“Stop.”_

Gabriel says one simple word and it’s so sudden,  _too sudden_ ; her hips buck up involuntarily and stay suspended off the bed while all she wants is to keep finger-fucking herself to an orgasm. Her nails dig into the pliable silicone of the vibe.

“I’m going to untie your hair now,” he states matter-of-factly, as if the conversation was about the weather instead. “You look more beautiful when it’s down. I like it better.”

Hesitantly withdrawing her fingers from her slick cunt—and those sloppy, squelching sounds when she does are too embarrassingly loud to her own ears— Amélie tries to control her breathing; but it hitches when she hears him move closer to her. His contorted silhouette lives in the silk twill of the scarf, like a play of shadows. 

His fingers card through her hair, close to the skin on the back of her head, and lace together under the elastic. She’s boxed in between his forearms. _What would they look like from up close?_ Scarred, pockmarked, and vein-riddled? Or covered in dark downy hair? Amélie gasps when Gabriel gently combs through her long tresses to get the elastic out.

            _She tries to imagine his face overtaken by desire, wide-blown pupils, flared nostrils, the button of his nose on the verge of brushing against her own and the stubbly hairs of his beard barely able to hide the wrinkles around the corners of his half-open mouth. What disciplinary action would he subject her to if she were to lean in right now? Heat pools in the bottom of her belly at the thought._

There’s no doubt in her mind that there’s a wet patch on the mattress right where she’s lying with her legs open, her body gotten the best of her.

“Put the vibe in,” he tells her gruffly, already retreating out of her personal bubble and taking his body heat away with him.

The big bulbous shape of the toy stretches her wider than her two fingers; she’s slow, teasing herself with the girth. Spasms traverse the expanse of her thighs when she settles the vibe inside so the antenna cups the curve of her pubic bone.

Weak, wanton sounds get stuck between her grit teeth as she angles her head back in desperation. Her fingertips follow the outline of her thighs to her abdomen to her flanks, the entire way up to her tits.

His silence almost feels like an abandonment, deliberately punctuated by mouthfuls of breath and she wishes she could feel the hot rush of them on her collarbones, writhing about underneath them, underneath _him_ , in the bed like she does now.

There’s no other distraction from the suspense except for the things she can sense, like his audible sighs, the glimmer of light caught in the silk twill of the scarf, the stretch of the toy inside her cunt, the feel of her hair long and loose around her shoulders and her own fingertips, unsure.

Amélie wouldn’t put it past him if he kept his phone on silent just to torture her a bit. When he looks down at her from his spot, how does he see her, she wonders. As warm flesh seasoned with her own sweat, left entirely at his mercy? As a jittery mess of a woman waiting to get utterly wrecked into an orgasm?

She strains her ears, trying to make out whether he’s touching himself already; it strikes her then that she wants him too, that she _badly_ wants him too.

Judging by the shifting of the sheets, Gabriel’s moving, repositioning himself on the foot-end of the bed. She spreads her legs a bit wider to show off how the toy fits her, subconsciously sinking her teeth into her bottom lip and angling her head to the side. Strands of hair cling to the side of her neck and the outline of her left shoulder.

He switches the vibe on and at first, it’s just a slow, titillating vibration that kindles the heat low in her belly.

Amélie shifts, her right leg stretched and her left leg bent; her foot’s unsteady on the mattress as the vibrations wind her up tightly inside. She palms her left breast, unable to keep still as he gradually amps up the vibe’s pace, and reaches for her pussy with her other hand.

“Don’t,” Gabriel warns lowly, his voice thick and guttural. Swallows something down his throat and the sound’s so much louder than the soft buzzing of the toy. “Ride it out.”

Her body’s burning up from head to toe, as if she’s taking a hot shower. Amélie screws her eyes shut behind the makeshift blindfold. Tingles race down her spine, over her thighs and her abdomen.

He switches to an even faster setting and it snatches the breath straight from between her teeth. One _broken_ , choked sob escapes her when the shaking becomes so much she involuntarily hitches her hips. She teases her nipple with her knuckles, unable to focus with how fogged up her mind is.

_But Gabriel’s behind the haze; she pictures_ _a ripple running over his arm muscles as he jerks himself off at the sight of her, the glimmer of his sweaty skin, his fat cockhead flushed red and leaking precum, and his face slack from pleasure when he gets as close as she is..._

She hauls a hand through her long tresses of hair and makes a fist at the base of her neck, trying to contain a strangled, desperate whine when the pace almost becomes unbearable.

Suddenly the vibrations stop, leaving the hot-coiled tension in her tummy to unwind restlessly on its own. She takes a deep breath, listens for a sign that _maybe_ he made a mistake, pressed the wrong button, _accidentally shut it off_ but there’s no sound aside from his own heavy breathing, aside from him jacking off.

Amélie shudders when he groans helplessly, a long-drawn and animalistic sound.

“Want more?” He prompts after a beat of silence. He’s not really asking, he’s just teasing _._

Her voice is shaky, but a small, indulging smile tugs on the corners of her mouth when she replies, “ _Papi… S’il vous plaît.”_

“Okay then.”

And instead of easing her into a fast pace like the first time around, Gabriel _fucks her over._ Sets the vibe to the fastest, hardest pace she’s experienced up ‘til now. She almost jolts forwards, away from the headboard, and wants to pull her hair out because it’s just too good, too fast, too _everything_.

Her legs are both bent now, knees hard-pressed together; the blindfold doesn’t matter at this moment because she’s coming so hard, her sight is blanked out with a white-red- _something._ Her toes are curling, her thighs are ticking with spasms and her one hand’s resting flat on her heaving chest.

The toy’s still vibrating, testing the limits of her raw, wet, puffy pussy. Amélie wants to open her mouth and beg him to stop, but she can’t find the energy when he keeps switching settings; fast and intense to languid and drawn-out to fast and intense again.

She comes twice in a span of three minutes, but the other orgasm wasn’t nearly as overwhelming as the first one. At least Gabe told her she could touch herself the second time around, leisurely playing with her oversensitive clit as the heat pools deep down her belly.

Gabriel shuts off the toy and she slouches against the headboard, boneless.

“You can take the vibe out, but keep the blindfold on, understood?” It’s clear by the tone of his voice that he won’t burke any disobedience from her.

Amélie takes the time to come back down to herself, hearing him change back into his clothes on the backdrop: the shuffle of his feet on the floor as he walks around, the soft thud of a drawer being pressed shut, the rustle of him tugging his pants back up and putting on his shirt and blazer.

Once he’s done changing, she can hear his footsteps become louder as he walks towards the nightstand. Gabriel carefully unties the knot at the back of her head and takes the scarf away, but instead of pulling away quickly again, he calmly looks at her face, examining her.

“You can take a long, nice shower if you want—” And before Amélie has a chance to interrupt him, he shakes his head and proffers her this small, amused smile, with a hint of teeth.

“Fuck the tab, you know,” he says nonchalantly as he bunches up the scarf in one of his large fists.

With his hands this up-close, she can see the dark spots on his knuckles very clearly, looking like bruises that never really had the time to fade.

“You should be careful, silk’s a really delicate fabric,” she advises kindly, in a voice so hoarse it’s like she’s had cotton wads stuck down her throat the entire time.

He thumbs the corner of the scarf sticking out of his grip and nods, more to himself than to her. “Yeah, I know. Dry-clean only, the colors look like they couldn’t even handle a wash by hand.”

Amélie sits upright and stretches her arms out above her head. Her long tresses cascade over her chest and back. She _reeks_ of sweat and sex. Gabriel gives her some space, picks up the vibe by the antenna—the bottom still slick and wet from her cunt, and makes his way to the door.

“Take all the time you need to clean up. I can fix you a drink in the meantime, if you want,” he offers, casting a glance over his shoulder.

Blinking owlishly, she inquires, “What kind of drink?”

“Couple of friends claim I make the perfect negroni,” Gabe answers with a shrug, trying to make it seem like it’s not really that big of a deal.

She chuckles, lightly shaking her head, and retorts, “I still have to drive, I’m afraid.”

“Tea? Or a good ol’ fashioned cup of coffee?” He prompts, nudging the door handle down with his elbow and pushing against the door with his shoulder.

“ _Café au lait_ would be fine, _merci_.”

Gabriel closes the door behind him to give her privacy. Her body’s already starting to cool off; goosebumps cover the expanse of her arms. With her eyes this sensitive to the bedroom lights, she blearily looks around, from the wardrobe to the desk, until her gaze falls onto something gleaming wet on the foot-end of the bed.

Doubling over and steadying herself on hands and knees, she crawls over to the foot-end, with the sheets neatly folded over. Sprays of cum are left to dry there. Amélie absentmindedly tucks a strand of hair behind her ear, ignoring how sweaty her skin there is, staring down at the wet patches with attentive eyes.

So, her imagination’s proven right; he fucked his cock into his fist until he came hard over the sheets, all to the sight of her writhing helplessly on his bed.

Her chest heaves and falls with a deep sigh. Amélie tentatively wets her bottom lip. _Et ne nous induis point en tentation, wasn’t it?_

Okay, she _really_ needs a shower right now. 

His bathroom is an extension to the style of his apartment: the color gradient of the tiles on one wall starts from black near the ceiling to a faded gray at the junction with the floor; the white ceramic of the toilet and lavabo contrast with the dark colors of the walls, ceiling and floor; the only break from the monochrome scheme is the wooden dresser with towels and washcloths.

Amélie soaps her body with his shower gel, starting from the column of her throat to the inside of her armpits to her sternum, then downwards her stomach, her pubic bone, her thighs and her knees, until she’s lathered in light, white foam.

The scent of his shower gel has this strong heady touch, way too masculine for a woman like her to wear, but she doesn’t mind how possessively the smell clings to her even after she’s rinsed off.

Standing in front of the large, square mirror hanging above the washing table, she dries herself off with a soft towel. Her long hair is wrapped up in another one. After she’s changed back into her clothes, she debates whether it’d be easier to make a dot or keep her hair down.

_You look more beautiful with your hair down._ Compliments never phased her before. _I like it better that way._ The clients are always right, she thinks distrait, so what’s the harm in doing things the way he wants?

She dismisses any other explanation as to why she would want to please him. _You’re a professional,_ comes her own silent chastisement, _you should know better not to mistake what your body wants for what your heart wants._

Gabriel’s a good guy, she admits to herself, a bit battered, a bit banged up, with hands reflective of his past. But he’s just another customer and at the end of the night she’s going back to the home Gérard wanted her to have.

            _The home he wanted them **both** to have. The half-furnished home with the high mortgage she’s working so hard to pay off. _

Draping a towel around her shoulders, Amélie combs through her dark strands with just her fingers to keep her hair from tangling up. She’ll brush it back at home, before she tumbles into bed. With wrinkled fingertips, she gingerly wipes the remnants of her mascara away from underneath her eyes.

When she enters the kitchen, she’s greeted by the sight of two large coffee mugs on the counter. They’re a matching pair in black and red polka dots. For some unknown reason, this brings a smile to her lips. The sound of the door opening makes him turn away from the open refrigerator; he looks somewhat ridiculous, caught in the harsh lighting like that, with his fancy blazer on and a gallon of milk in one hand.

“You want to stay here or move to the living room?” Gabriel asks as he puts the plastic jug onto the smooth, spotless surface of the counter and unscrews the cap.

After shutting the bedroom door behind her, Amélie walks over and settles her elbows onto the counter as he pours milk into one mug. “I don’t mind standing,” she answers, bent over, nestling her chin on the cross of her two wrists.

“ _Oh_.” It’s an exhalation, a sheepish expression on his face indicating that he hadn’t expected her to say that. He scrapes his throat self-consciously, reflexively thumbing the white cap in his hand, and continues, “Yeah, no problem. _Uhm_ , is this enough milk?”

Gabriel carefully shoves the mug closer to her while she languidly pushes herself up; her back’s arched inwards and her hair’s all over the place.

Propping her chin on the palm of her left hand, she then peers into the mug and gives him a nod, regarding him with half-lidded eyes. The corners of his mouth twitch, a ghost of a smile graces his scarred features for a beat or two, and he stops brushing the pad of his thumb over the plastic lid, seemingly at ease.

“I have a question.” Her accent colored the importance of the last word more than the weight of her stare could. “If you would indulge me, Gabriel?”

He puts the cap back on the jug, screwing it back on tighter than he probably intended if the way his biceps strain under the fabric of his blazer are any indication. She watches his hands intently, especially the dark blotting on his knuckles that she’d just noticed back on the bed.

“Yeah sure.” There’s something gravelly about his voice, she muses as she observes him turn away to put the gallon of milk back into the fridge, tapping two fingertips against her cheekbone.

Gabriel must’ve noticed because he swallows reflexively, trying to get rid of the extra layer of thickness to his voice as he hesitates for a moment, one hand on the open door of the fridge.

His eyes are _so_ warm. Amélie blinks in surprise at the spontaneity of that realization, but it’s easy to come to that conclusion when thinking things through. Especially now that he glances at her again, with curiosity; his eyes, wrinkled around the corners, rimmed with black, short lashes and dark circles from too many sleepless nights, but the color of them still vivid, even in the mellow lighting of the kitchen.

“So… What’s on your mind?” He prompts, leaning against the stove with arms crossed over his chest, one ankle over the other, a deep furrow edged into the skin between his brows.

She arches an eyebrow in amusement when he drums his fingers onto his upper arm and holds up her right index finger. Bringing the mug to her mouth, the steam lazily wafts against the button of her nose and she simply breathes in the smell of hot coffee, delights in the characteristic aroma.

Carefully, she takes a sip to test the waters and hums at the back of her throat when the strong flavor burrows itself in the cavern of her mouth, sticks to her palate.

“I wanted to ask,” Amélie begins as she warms her palms with the ceramic cup, “Why you haven’t, _comment on dit…_ , discomforted me. During our sessions, I mean.” She makes a meaningless gesture with her hand, continuing, “Pain and pleasure are close companions in a BDSM session, _vous savez._ ”

At the pregnant pause that follows her statement, she chances another glance at him and brings the mug back down to the counter with a curt _clang_. He looks away from her, somewhere off to the side, the junction of the wall and the floor in the corner maybe.

Shadows are splayed along the bridge of his nose, blending the pale tissue of a scar in the gaunt of his cheek with his darker skin tone. His profile is dominated by the shape of his nose and the distinct structure of his jaw and his bearded chin. He’s still drumming his fingers to a nonexistent tune.

“ _If you don’t want to talk about it…_ ”

But he doesn’t let her finish her sentence, cutting her off by suddenly closing the distance between the stove and the kitchen counter. While his movement’s purposeful and fluid in a way that’s reminiscent of much dedication and practice, there’s a hint of something unreadable in the expression edged on his face. She finds herself tightening her grip on the mug.

“It’s not about _inflicting pain_ ,” Gabriel mutters before he picks up his own ceramic cup and takes a big gulp of the now lukewarm, black coffee. He quickly continues, “I’ve hurt a lot of people. Seen some shit back in the Middle East. Iraq, Afghanistan, you name it and I’ve probably been there at one point in time. Look. I didn’t hire you because I want a more _hands on_ experience or _what the fuck ever_ …”

He pins her down with his frantic, worrisome eyes as he tries to explain what he’s currently feeling, holding onto the mug with both of his large hands. “I’m not some sadist, I just wanna be…”

“In control,” Amélie finishes the sentence for him in a calm, almost detached voice. She then proffers him a kind smile, maintaining the eye-contact.

It’s not that she doesn’t understand, she catches the gist of it anyway, leaving the details to the privacy of his personal experiences, to the dark corners of his weary, war-torn mind, but her expectations have been proven wrong, again.

Most of her clients who are into BDSM play, prefer a kind of watered-down, pop culture version where most of the inspiration was drawn from porn or their wife’s worn copy of 50 Shades.

They either like the excitement of ball-gags, fluffy handcuffs and whips, or like the thought of being able to escape their everyday life. Emotional catharsis and a few orgasms for two hundred fifty an hour, extra charge not included.

“Yeah,” Gabe tacks on with a nod of his head, pressing his fingertips into the cup like he wants to leave a mark or crush the ceramic.

They lapse into an agreeable silence for a moment, a moment which she capitalizes on to observe the African violets near the wall. She likes how the petals frumpishly curl at the edges, defiant in shape and in color, breaking the monochrome pattern of Gabriel’s kitchen with splashes of purple and blue hues, and yellow too, at the heart of the flowers. So obviously well taken care of.

Soft, rhythmic ticking drags her out of her quiet contemplation and when she looks back up at him, she sees how he’s unable to keep still even with something to busy his hands. _How endearing_ , she concludes as she leans her cheek against her knuckles. He takes another sip of coffee, seemingly flustered by her wide grin.

“Thanks, _uh_ , for listening to me and stuff,” he says eventually, long after their cups are empty and cold, when he’s helping her put on her coat and they’re left standing on the threshold of his apartment, of the night.

Adjusting the strap of her purse across her shoulder, Amélie gazes at him from the corner of her eye, murmuring a response, “ _C’est de rien_ , Gabriel.”

“Yeah, but still…” He doesn’t finish his sentence, restlessly shakes his head and takes a step towards the clothing rack, then pats down the pockets of his coat, looking for something.

When he pulls out his wallet, she straightens her posture and takes a sharp breath. He hands her two hundred dollar bills, which she gracefully accepts with a high-held chin and a watered-down facsimile of a smile.

“For your… _Well_ , everything.”

His tone of voice sounds bittersweet to her ears, because like the previous time, she’d rather not take his tip. Something sour breaks open in her stomach, like a knee-jerk reaction when she zips open her purse, folds open her own wallet and stows away the two bills.

It’s strange because were this any other client, she’d gladly count her winnings of the day.

They’re regarding each other in silence again, Amélie realizes as she toys with the zipper of her purse, and genuinely smiles this time. “We certainly do this often, _non?_ ” She points out, “Just… Watching each other.”

“Can you blame me?” Gabe prompts, scratching the button of his nose, brandishing his smirk like a switchblade. “You’re easily in the top five of dangerously beautiful women I’ve ever met.’

She twirls a wet strand of dark hair around her finger, lightly shaking her head as if she could shake off the effect of his compliment. What would he do with his hands if she told him that she doesn’t mind watching him as well? If she told him that he has this handsome ruggedness going for him.

“Charmer,” comes her teasing reply, not daring to voice the thoughts on her mind.

Gabriel’s mouth splits open in a wolfish grin, full of straight teeth and a flash of tongue clenched between them.

“So, what’s the time right now, _monsieur_ Reyes?” She inquires politely, abiding to the agency’s guidelines.

_Always ask the client for the time at the end of the session to avoid discussions in the future._

He pulls his phone from the pocket of his blazer, unlocks the screen and shows her the time; the black digits are printed across the photograph he uses as a screensaver, obscuring his own face and the faces of his two friends. She assumes they’re at some party, judging by the festive decorations on the backdrop and the champagne flute in the woman’s hand.

It’s almost eleven on the dot but the time passed so quickly it didn’t feel like three hours had gone by at all.

“You can round off to eleven,” he says when their gazes cross again, only looking away when he tucks his phone away into the pocket of his blazer, together with his wallet.

“ _Merci._ ” It’s such a stale expression when pronounced in a sigh, she thinks quietly, preparing to leave.

Gabriel dutifully walks her down to her car and says goodbye to her on the edge of the curb, looking somewhat lost in the light of the street lantern. His scars stand out more vividly, especially those edged deep along the skin of his right cheek and his lower lip. Amélie gives him a quick wave before ducking away into the driver’s seat.

His neighborhood seems like an uneventful one, with apartment buildings making up the bulk of the block. There’s nothing particularly noteworthy, aside from the small children’s playground on the other side of the street.

During the daytime, she supposes the neighborhood looks rather drab with all that concrete, but right now, the darkness of night combined with the streetlights make everything seem so peaceful, so domestic.

She clicks in her seatbelt, puts on her radio and starts the car, and after throwing a glance into the rearview mirror, she drives off. The screen of her GPS lights up a bright green, contrasting with the blue and white and red colors on her dashboard and on the display screen of her radio.

Getting out of Los Angeles was a bit of a hassle because there was an accident on Fletcher drive with a firetruck somewhere before the merging lane to the Glendale freeway, but thankfully traffic progressed smoothly on the Ventura freeway.

Amélie manages to get to Pasadena in thirty-five minutes and once she’s off the freeway, it takes five more minutes to reach home.

Somehow the emptiness of the house Gérard designed for them, crawls inside of her and washes out any energy she might’ve had left.

With its light gray walls, herringbone floor, console table and vintage-inspired ceiling, the entryway gives the impression it’s the prelude to a house from the 19th century.  She kicks off her sandals in the entry hall, puts her coat on the first plateau of the console table and teeters over to the kitchen barefoot.

After having flipped on the light, Amélie saunters inside and drops her purse onto the kitchen island in the middle of the room; she settles down on one of the bar stools, takes out her phone, and sends a text to Fiona from the agency to clock out. Afterwards she checks her work email.

She rolls her eyes when she’s reading the status update her colleague sent her on the site that keeps crashing. Ever since the latest addition to the graphic design team, Hana Song, updated the website for the seasonal collection, there’s been a bug with the final stages of the online payments and it still hasn’t been solved.

This weekend is going to end up busier than she expected, she thinks miserably, propping her chin on her hand. Crossing one leg over the other, she then scrolls down the rest of her unread emails, updates her to do list and types in a few memos.

It’s five minutes past midnight. Amélie heaves a heavy sigh, staring blankly at the cabinet right in front of her.

Some of the cloudy gray paint’s chipped, showing off the woodgrain underneath; the cabinet has open shelves, stocked with cooking oils, jars of sugar, salt and dried herbs, and bags of flour and dried fruits. She blinks slowly and taps her index finger against her cheekbone a couple of times.

Amélie slinks off the seat, walks over to the cabinet and grabs the torn-open bag of vitamin C pills. Her lifestyle has become so hectic since she took up becoming an escort on the side. Cooking’s a chore at this point.

With the slightly acidic taste of oranges on her tongue, she plucks her purse from the kitchen island and walks back to the entryway, then goes up the stairs, to the hallway, passes by Gérard’s study—a dark and empty room that needs to be furnished from scratch—and ends up in the bathroom.

Two toothbrushes are in the plastic cup on the washing table under the mirror with the gilded frame. She starts to strip down, first her pants, then her blouse and her underwear.

For her expensive lingerie sets, she has a wicker basket that serves as a laundry hamper. Once she’s changed into a cheaper set of panties and her pajamas.

She starts Mozart’s piano movement #20 in D minor on her phone before doing her skincare routine. Applying cleansing water, massaging her face with a scrub and rinsing off; her movements are automatic, her thoughts elsewhere, tangled in the bedsheets of another man.

_Gabriel Reyes_ , the corners of her mouth twitch upwards in a small smile when she remembers how gently he tied and untied the knot of that makeshift blindfold at the back of her head. It really was a nice night, she concludes.

Her gaze catches on her own reflection when she’s dabbing her left cheek dry with a fluffy white towel: a mess of hair curling all along the outline of her jaw and neck, ghastly-looking pale skin under the white bathroom lights, and a pair of exhausted eyes.

_Tes yeux, ma chèrie, ce sont des flammes et des pierreries_ — Gérard had once whispered against her temple as he was trying to be helpful by brushing her hair, but he was just mostly teasing his fingertips along the curve of her bared shoulder blade, over the nape of her neck, and down her spine.

Amélie blinks slowly and chastises herself. _Here’s a thought, if this memory threatened to overtake you a year ago, you would’ve broken down crying, so what if you feel kind of hollow now. It’s as close as you can get to feeling complacent when it comes to Gérard._ She takes a deep breath and drapes the towel over the bronze bar next to the washing table.

_Here’s another thought, let’s just call this progress because right now it’s time to moisturize, comb your hair, brush your teeth and go to sleep. You got two clients tomorrow and some budgeting to do._

She’s holding onto the tableau of the washing table with both hands, studying herself in the mirror. On one side of the tap, there’s the plastic cup with the toothbrushes and her tube of toothpaste, on the other side of the tap, there’s an empty spot. Big enough to put something decorative if she wanted.

_Maybe I should invest in some flowers to liven up the place_ , she thinks unsurely, _maybe violets will do._

.


	5. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The buzzing sound’s so loud she can hear how it reverberates inside and blocks out the strumming of the guitar, but when it’s over, the music’s stopped and then the sound of hurried, approaching footsteps breaks the silence. Her heart thuds just a fraction faster in her chest. Gabriel opens the door and stands in front of her, his face carrying the faintest of flushes in the apple of his cheeks.
> 
> Amélie smiles lazily at him and greets, “Bon soir, Gabriel.”
> 
> “Hey,” he responds, moving to the side. “Come on in.”
> 
> There’s something about his appearance that throws her off balance. He looks handsome, of course; with his ruffled curls, fuller beard, and the fabric of his blazer stretching nicely along the width of his broad shoulders and accentuating his torso; but he’s too jumpy, fretting about with his hands. She wants to reach out and touch her hand to his shoulder, but doesn’t know if the gesture would be appreciated. So, instead she smiles a bit wider, a bit brighter, and hope that eases his nerves a bit.
> 
> “Don’t mind the suitcase,” Gabe says when they walk into the living room.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you for being this patient with me :3

.

_You’re running late._

Amélie mumbles a curse under her breath when she checks the time on her phone. She’s in the bathroom, in front of the mirror, trying to get her makeup done in less than five minutes, but blending her eyeshadow seems to take longer than usual and she still needs to apply her eyeliner and lipstick.

It’s been a whole month since Amélie’s last seen Gabriel, so she was pleasantly surprised when the agency contacted her yesterday and said she was expected on his doorstep tonight at the same time as always.

_And_ since she’s in the city anyway, she figured she could invite Satya over for dinner at her favorite bistro, Church  & State. Satya used to work with the same architecture bureau as Gérard before Vishkar Corporation offered her a position on the design team for their latest project. It’s been ages since they last saw each other face to face; and aside from colleagues, clients and the cashiers at the closest grocery store, Amélie doesn’t really have that many people she talks to in person.

Her fingers are shaky when she uses her liquid eyeliner.

Makeup’s scattered all over the tableau of the washing table: several brushes, a matte concealer, foundation, a tube of lipbalm, her favorite lipstick, an eyeshadow palette, a brow pencil, and her mascara’s next to the glass with the single peach rose she bought to liven up the bathroom.

Amélie heaves a heavy sigh in relief when her eyes are done.

In between looking for sales on amazon—for furniture, designer lingerie, _new scented candles_ —and doing her finances, she was mulling over what to wear for the occasion. Two choices popped up immediately; the first outfit was the short, wine red A-line dress she managed to get her hands on last Christmas; the second outfit, and the one that lucked out after some consideration in the shower, was an off-the-shoulder shirt in combination with her velvet plissé skirt.

If she’s being honest with herself, the _only_ reason she chose to wear this dress is because she wants to feel Gabriel’s hands on her shoulder blades as he helps with the zipper on the back.

After she deems herself presentable, put her earrings in and stuffs the essentials into her makeup bag, Amélie throws one last glance at the mess she left behind on the washing table before hurrying down to the entry hall. Her purse, knitted vest and gray overcoat are on the console table. Not even the sunlight falling into the entry hall in waves from the windows framing the front door manage to warm her bare feet on the cold herringbone floor. She slips into her black pumps, wrangles her hair into a quick, messy bun, puts on her knitted vest, puts her makeup bag into her purse and gathers her vest and coat into her arms. Pushing the door handle down with her elbow, she leans her weight against the door and stumbles outside. Amélie can look straight into her kitchen from the doorway.

So, before turning around and locking the door behind her, she can see the bouquet of violets with their pink-tipped petals on the kitchen island, kept in an earthenware pot that her neighbor gifted her two years ago, for her birthday. They really finish off the kitchen.

Her mouth’s curved in a small, private smile when she turns away and strides hastily over the flagstone path to the driveway. Some wayward hairs slip free from her bun and curl along her jawline when she haphazardly drops her purse and overcoat on the hood of her car.

_Oomph._

Amélie shoves her arms into the sleeves of the simple, black knitted vest, opens the door to the passenger’s side and dumps her stuff on the seat. Sliding those loose strands back behind her ear, she rounds the hood of her car, her high heels clicking loudly on the concrete. Soon, she backs down the straight, short driveway—one arm thrown over the headrest of her seat, head angled to check if there are no incoming cars, and the haughty, three-story manor of her neighbor caught in her peripheral— and drives onto the street. Her house grows smaller and smaller in her rearview mirror. _Our house,_ her mind corrects acerbically as she puts on her signal and rounds the corner, _and the idea for a garden that Gérard and you shamelessly copied from his parents_. Amélie takes a deep breath and puts on the radio to take her thoughts off things. In a split-second, the announcer’s voice fills the inside of the car, swift and loud and carefree.

_[…]_ _and today, for throwback Thursday I’m serving you two thousand and seven realness, that’s right, what was the […]_

She rolls her eyes and starts to mess with the channels, all the while keeping an eye on the road ahead of her. Maybe if she’s lucky, there won’t be that much traffic and she’ll find a parking spot right away and end up just being _twenty minutes_ late. It would be nice for things to go _her way_ for once, because god knows she’s had a rotten streak the last few years. But things don’t go her way _at all_ ; there’s a pile-up with an eighteen-wheeler right before the exit she’s supposed to take, causing all the traffic to be redirected on one lane, and that adds another fifteen minutes to her delay; and then when she finally gets to downtown LA, some woman in a BMW cuts her off and casually takes the parking spot she’d had her eye on first. Her stomach cramps up in stress.

Amélie really hates to be late.

When she arrives at the bistro, Satya’s waiting for her next to the tables outside, purse between her feet and tablet in hand. Her eyebrows are furrowed together and her jaw’s set, as if she’s struggling with something. It wouldn’t be unlike Satya to have brought her work along with her. Amélie slows down, slightly out of breath from jogging on heels, and gives her a greeting and an apology at the same time.

Satya slowly looks away from the screen, and seizes her up from toe to head. Raising an eyebrow, she remarks, “Your eyeliner’s uneven.”

“ _Vraiment?_ ” Amélie responds, instinctively reaching up to touch a hand to her cheek. “Is it…” She pauses deliberately before frowning, gesturing at her own face and finishing her question, “Obvious?”

“It is to me,” she answers matter-of-fact before stowing her tablet away and daintily slipping the strap of her handbag over her shoulder.

If it weren’t for the hand, nobody would’ve ever noticed that her entire arm was a prosthetic one, hidden by the well-tailored jacket she’s wearing. Not that Satya shies away from the attention it brings her, even if she doesn’t understand said attention _per se_ , and remains nonplussed about any questions people might have. _If anyone has doubts about my skills, I’ll simply point them to the buildings I’ve designed_. It was her standard, and somewhat dry reply whenever someone asks her if she’s missed any opportunities because of it.

“I’ll excuse myself to the bathroom after dinner,” Amélie amends, gesturing for her to go inside first. “I have an appointment tonight and can’t afford to look off.”

Satya hums noncommittedly under her breath as she enters the bistro. While the dining area’s big, the two rows of tables for four and the bar take up a sizeable chunk of space, making the room seem smaller than it is. But with the waft of homemade bread coming in from the open kitchen and the good acoustics the ceiling provides, the bistro comes off as cozy instead of crowded. Amélie reserved a table at the window, offering a view of the street and the Belgian restaurant opposite of them. Before the waitress comes over to hand them the menu and the wine list, Satya busied herself by adjusting the cutlery and the napkin, and shifted her white wine glass in the correct angle. They don’t take long to decide what they want to eat and place their order. Amélie knows it’s a poor show of manners, but puts her phone on the table anyway. Some chanson from the seventies is playing softly on the backdrop. _Non, non, rien n’a changé,_ she knows the chorus by heart, _tout, tout a continué_.

“How have you been?” She inquires, slipping a few strands of hair back behind her ear.

“Annoyed,” Satya says, levelling her a look with those calculating eyes of hers. “As you might’ve heard, Vishkar has come across some troubles with the renovation project in Lancaster.”

Amélie nods at the waitress when she brings the carafe of water, and then turning back to her friend, says, “I read about that somewhere online. What’s going on precisely?”

“Street protests. Students mostly, and this while _they_ should be the ones to know better,” here she purses her lips in minor distaste, watching how Amélie pours her a glass of water. “Vishkar is not only being fought on the streets, but also in court. Although I’ve been reassured our lawyers will have the case settled soon.”

“This is about the mass resettlement, right?”

Most of the local newspapers have dedicated a good portion of their front pages to the protests for weeks. While Amélie hasn’t followed the case attentively, she does recall that the protests were organized by students and environmental organizations. There was one guy with dreads whose pictures were frequently featured in the articles.

“Correct,” Satya answers curtly.

“Until it has been dealt with, I can’t go about with my work either and this...” She glares at the table, as if the arrangement of the flower basket in the center also irritates her, and admits lowly, “It frustrates me a great deal.”

“It certainly sounds like an annoyance,” Amélie readily agrees, reaching for her glass.

 Arriving with the _hors d’oeuvres_ , the waitress breaks the lull in conversation and Amélie wants to take the opportunity to breach another topic. She waits however, until the waitress has swapped the flower basket for the plates with goat cheese, toasted baguette, caramelized onions and smoked bacon.

“I was wondering if I could have your opinion on the furniture I was considering for Gérard’s study,” she says, reaching for her phone. “If you don’t mind, of course.”

“I’m not an interior designer,” she deadpans, stabbing her fork into a slab of goat cheese.

“ _Non_ , you’re right, of course. But you _knew_ Gérard,” Amélie responds easily, putting her phone on her napkin and loading some bread, bacon and onions onto her own plate.

Satya crosses one leg over the other and gives her this pensive look, with eyebrows arched, eyes narrowed, lips pursed and chin held high. Her posture’s effortlessly regal, Amélie muses between bites. It’s a thought that struck her before, way back at their first meeting four and a half years ago, at a retirement party.

“I suppose I could take a look,” she agrees with the wave of a hand, the chrome of her prosthetic shimmering a warm orange in the glare of the lights dangling from the ceiling.

They go through the pictures Amélie saved to her phone: various customizable l-shaped desks, computer desks, shelves, office chairs, bureau decorations and armchairs. When the waitress brings their main course, they’re still discussing materials, color schemes and what kind of finish the wood should have.

Separating the quinoa from the winter vegetables with her fork, Satya remarks, “It’s an interesting choice, but that black desk’s _too_ sleek. Your husband preferred to work with softer, more natural colors.”

She shifts through the pics until she comes across the oak wooden, two-in-one piece desk they were talking about a bit earlier. “This one would be far more suitable.”

Amélie chews her inner cheek thoughtfully, stabbing at the glazed carrot on her plate. She somehow feels guilty, because she remembers what Gérard used to say about his study— _imagine, ma chèrie, a room like in the movies, with white walls and white drapes, so I can get lost there instead of in my thoughts—_ but there’s something immensely satisfying about imagining a sleek, black desk there, a bold statement in the middle of all his white.

“You chose a lot of black and gray accents this time around,” Satya remarks while reaching for her glass of water.

Suspicion’s absent from her tone of voice. Amélie’s secretively grateful that Satya doesn’t react like some of her colleagues or other friends would; fishing around for more information with a comment like that, accompanied with a knowing look or smile, convinced there was a conscious reason behind the choices.  _And maybe a real place was lingering in the back of your own mind when you were browsing_ , comes her own subtle beratement, _maybe the living room of a man you met not that long ago._ She pricks her fork into the chicken and the tender meat yields immediately, almost falling apart on her plate.

“I guess my own taste got ahead of my memories,” she explains with a cool smile and leaves it at that.

When they’ve finished their dinner, they decide to skip out on dessert. Satya daintily puts her cutlery on her empty plate and reminds Amélie to go fix her eyeliner before the bill comes. As she stands up, a family with three children enters the bistro, and the youngest child—a girl with twin pigtails and bright, pink shoes—drags all the attention towards her with her carefree laughter. Amélie feels a dull stab of _jealousy,_ like a poisoned blade between two ribs. _Life’s unfair_ always sounds so blasé, right up to the point the words ring true and it suddenly doesn’t feel so blasé anymore.

Small moments like these just hit her the hardest.

Amélie walks over to the bathroom with her makeup bag in hand. Enters the first cubicle, uses the toilet and fixes her panties and skirt, then goes to wash her hands at the mirror, zips open her makeup bag and gets to work. Satya was right, her eyeliner’s noticeably uneven. After acknowledging the other woman who entered the bathroom with a smile, she snatches a sheet of paper from the dispenser, wets it and carefully dabs at her eyeliner. When she’s done with her eyes, she swipes her tongue over her teeth and decides to brush them again. Travel kit toothpaste always comes in handy. She also decides to wipe her mouth clean of lipstick and apply some simple lip balm, she can do her lipstick again in the car after all. Her visit to the bathroom takes her five minutes over all.

“Better?” Amélie asks as she takes her seat again, putting her makeup bag on the tabletop.

Satya had taken her tablet from her handbag during her absence, never one to waste time when she could be working on some design or another. Strands of healthy and glossy black hair slide back her cheeks when she snaps her head up to look. She holds up her tablet in one hand like she’s taking inventory, going down a list with the forefinger of her other hand outstretched.

Her reply’s quick, bracketed by a pleased smile. “Much better.”

“Merci,” Amélie says, putting her makeup bag in her purse and taking out her wallet, ready to look over the bill and pay for dinner. “It’s on me.”

Arching an eyebrow, Satya lowers her tablet and tilts her head. She studies her for a couple of seconds, before politely protesting her offer. “You don’t have to, I really don’t mind paying my fair share.”

She absentmindedly tucks some hair behind her ear, earring dangling, says, “Satya, _please_. It was great seeing you again—”

Several emotions flicker over her face, much like the lights would highlight another aspect of her features if she would move around: a sliver of doubt manifests itself in the downwards drag of the corners of her mouth, but just like that, it’s gone again, replaced by a grateful smile and crinkled eyes. Amélie sometimes forgets Satya hasn’t even turned thirty yet.

“I needed this,” she admits hesitantly, surprised at the vulnerability in her own tone of voice, fingers clenching the fabric of her skirt between them.

Satya makes a sound at the back of her throat, something close to a hum, and says, “ _Well_ , if you insist on paying, then I can only say that I appreciate the gesture.” Her smile widens, grows even fonder. “You have my thanks.”

She shakes her head and then signals the waitress to come over.

After paying, getting up, saying goodbye and walking back to her car, Amélie discovers she still has an hour to make it to Gabe’s doorstep. She slips into the driver’s seat and thuds the back of her head against the head rest of the chair, takes a deep, steadying breath. Carding a hand through her messy bun, she frees her hair and dumps the elastic on the passenger’s seat. Her gaze catches on the reflection of her face in the rearview mirror.

_Lipstick. Right. And don’t forget to take off your earrings too._

Time passes quickly, even when you’re driving from one parking spot to another, and Amélie soon finds herself in a familiar hallway, in front of a familiar door. She can hear soft guitar music playing from inside, a bittersweet melody that sounds southern and exotic. His voice, she can hear too. She stands there, combing out her messy hair one last time with her fingers and adjusting the straps of her purse so they don’t dig into her right shoulder; her movements captured in the peephole’s fisheye glass. She presses the buzzer next to the door, straightens her posture and breathes out through her nose. The buzzing sound’s so loud she can hear how it reverberates inside and blocks out the strumming of the guitar, but when it’s over, the music’s stopped and then the sound of hurried, approaching footsteps breaks the silence. Her heart thuds just a fraction faster in her chest. Gabriel opens the door and stands in front of her, his face carrying the faintest of flushes in the apple of his cheeks.

Amélie smiles lazily at him and greets, “ _Bon soir,_ Gabriel.”

“Hey,” he responds, moving to the side. “Come on in.”

There’s something about his appearance that throws her off balance. He looks handsome, of course; with his ruffled curls, fuller beard, and the fabric of his blazer stretching nicely along the width of his broad shoulders and accentuating his torso; but he’s too jumpy, fretting about with his hands. She wants to reach out and touch her hand to his shoulder, but doesn’t know if the gesture would be appreciated. So, instead she smiles a bit wider, a bit brighter, and hope that eases his nerves a bit.

“Don’t mind the suitcase,” Gabe says when they walk into the living room.

Her gaze falls on the hard-cover suitcase next to the armchair, then goes to the acoustic guitar discarded on the sofa. She doesn’t recall seeing the instrument before. The body must’ve been done by a professional artist, because the eye for detail’s stunning, even if some of the paint has started to chip. Amélie would like to watch him play sometime.

He nervously pulls at the cuff of his blazer, muttering, “I’m leaving tomorrow, going on a trip to Illinois—” He trails off, looking away, like he doesn’t know whether to continue or not.

Amélie gives him a moment to collect himself.

“ _Right…_ Anyway, I’ll put this old thing away so you can take a seat. Do you want something to drink, maybe?” Gabe’s already moving about, hurrying to take the guitar and make space for her.

She crosses her arms in front of her chest, tilting her head to the side, momentarily transfixed by the subtle way his muscles shift under the sleeves of his blazer. Rubbing her upper arm absentmindedly, she looks off to the side, to the kitchen and, from the corner of her eye, the door to his bedroom.

Everything seems to be like how she remembers, with not a stitch out of place, _but… Where are his violets?_

“Alright,” Gabriel says, drawing her away from her musings, holding the guitar up with one hand. “Just gonna go put this away, now.”

Amélie turns, with half a mind to ask him about the flowers, but before she gets the chance to open her mouth, he’s already walked past her. She worries her lower lip between her teeth, then shakes her head and sits down on the sofa. His pack of cigarettes is on the coffee table, next to his tablet and a copy of the _Journal of Military and Strategic Studies,_ and there’s a cigarette butt left smoldering in the glass ashtray, abandoned in a hurry.

“ _So_ …” He prompts, halfway in his kitchen, one hand flat on the countertop, _fingers drumming_ , “Drinks?”

She raises an eyebrow; she’s used to Gabriel being a bit _hesitant_ before they start their sessions, but right now there’s something downright frantic about him. Some sort of nervous energy dictates his behavior and she’s _worried_ for him.

He should’ve guessed that she would simply answer with: _“Water, please.”_

Gabe pulls the refrigerator door open and grabs a bottle of water, moves on to the cabinets and pulls out two small glasses, and they clink loudly as he puts them down on the kitchen counter with a bit more force than necessary. She smooths over her skirt with the palm of a hand.

“You are still so full of surprises, Gabriel,” Amélie remarks, trying to keep her tone of voice light and airy, bunching a handful of skirt in her fist.

“What do you mean?” He prompts, leaning over the counter to stare at her, bracketing the bottle of water and glasses between his two arms.

Leaning into the plush rest of the couch, she replies, “You, playing the guitar,” here her lips curve into a playful smirk, “ _Singing.”_

Making a displeased, faintly throaty noise, Gabriel turns his nose up at her statement and uncaps the bottle, starts pouring the two glasses of water. “Yeah, _well_ …”

He begins gruffly, holds the bottle straight again when he’s done, “Therapist said I’d better pick up some old hobby again, since it all went to shit this month,” and then as an afterthought, “Besides Fareeha—my colleague’s _kid,_ well, _kid…_ Kind of funny considering she’s in her thirties by now, anyway, she always liked it when I played the guitar for her, so I figured, why the fuck not?”

The sigh falls all too easily from his lips; the plastic of the bottle crunches under the force of his fingers, his hand. “I guess I missed it more than I wanted to admit,” and he hates how wistful his voice sounds, how scratchy and _weak_.

Amélie watches him attentively when he walks over and places her glass in front of her on the tabletop. There’s worry there, at the corners of her eyes and in the thin line of her lips, but he pretends not to notice. His stomach awkwardly flops down to the bottom of his belly and he ignores _that_ too. With trembling hands that he gathers in his lap when he’s sat down in his armchair, he looks at the floor first before he raises his chin and dares a glance at her.

“Do you want to talk about it?” She asks gently, head tilted to the side, a few wayward strands of hair escaped from behind the arch of her ear.

Gabriel rubs his hands together, _stop shaking already fuck_ , and heaves another weary sigh. Because he feels like he owes it to her and because he hasn’t seen her in a month and because he _missed_ her, being around her and talking to her, he knows he should come clean. It doesn’t make admitting his weaknesses any easier though. And god knows he was at his weakest this month, sleep-deprived for days and stumbling through his apartment like he stumbled through life in Afghanistan, from one obstacle to another.

“I felt like shit for the better part of the month,” he says, a wry undertone in his voice, and he wrings his hands together, rubs his fingers over the back of one hand.

“Look, I…” He falters, and a frown wedges a burrow between his brows. Gabe decides to try and explain in a way she might understand, “After your husband died in that car accident, were you afraid of driving?”

She blinks owlishly, narrows her eyes then and he can see the answer in the expression on her face. “What does that have to do with anything?” Amélie asks warily, pressing her knees together.

“Hear me out, okay,” Gabe placates, “So, let’s say I was actually in a car accident and sometimes I still get scared _shitless_ at the thought of driving. Like, I could dream about sitting behind a steering wheel and wake up _sweating—_ ” He interrupts himself by hauling a hand through his mop of greying curls and scratching at the nape of his neck, freshly shaven. His look is serious, grim. “I relapsed, got one nightmare and my entire sleeping schedule got fucked. Thought I could handle it on my own.”

He shakes his head, taking her silence in stride. It really was a nightmare from start to finish, including walking in the waiting room of his therapist’s practice, undoubtedly with a hangdog expression on his face, and sitting down there on one of those uncomfortable plastic chairs, trying to figure out how to explain that he _ruined_ his violets and that something inside of him _snapped_. Because that was the hardest part, _really_. Coming to terms with the fact that in his delusions, he’d knocked the white clay pot holding his African violets right off the kitchen counter and onto the floor.

She reaches for her glass of water and takes a sip, studying him from between her long, mascara-slicked eyelashes.

“I went three days without sleeping,” Gabriel says, recalling how exhaustion had become muscle memory and how adrenalin nitpicked him every step along the way. “On the fourth day, I knocked over my flowers and that seemed to shake me out of my stupor. Scheduled an appointment with my therapist that same day. Got myself some sleeping pills and, yeah, I’ve been doing better now.”

He pauses, annoyed at how much he rambled, and almost downs his glass of water in one gulp.

“ _Gabriel?_ ”

“I mean I have to do _better_ ,” Gabriel interrupts, muttering more to himself than to her, “Can’t afford to fuck things up while I’m at the training facility.”

Amélie carefully places the glass back on the coffee table. She’s sitting in the exact same spot where he had a mental breakdown for two whole hours, where he huddled up and burrowed his nose into the cushion, eyes squinted shut, helpless to get his mind off the dizzying pain in his chest, like he’d just ran ten miles in one go and forgot to stop for breath. He swallows audibly, the soft crunching sound reverberating between his own two ears. All it took was one lousy dream to knock him down every step of progress he climbed since he came back. Got him looking back at the ceiling of his bedroom again. She says his name again, and he inhales deeply, through his nose. _Recovery isn’t a straight line, his therapist assured him kindly, there are turns and bends and sometimes you have to go down the same road twice or three times._ Gabe gazes at her steady hands and breathes out.

“I’m okay now, Amélie. I’m okay, really,” He answers, holding back the frustration in his voice, and the smile he gives her feels misplaced on his lips after a story like that, but he feels like he should give that much. “Anyway, what about you?”

“I’m doing fine, actually,” She says, with the barest hint of trepidation in her voice, in the glint in her eyes. “I met up with an old friend and it felt good. I never thought it would feel so good to talk to someone.”

He laughs despite himself and mutters, “Funny how that goes, huh?”

“ _Oui_ , very funny,” Amélie agrees with him. Shadows are playing on one side of her face, shifting between the strands of hair that are hanging over her right cheek, and with one smooth movement, her entire face’s bared to his gaze again, hair tucked neatly behind her ear.

“Pass me a cigarette?”

She takes out two cigarettes, smiling cheekily at him before putting the filter of one between her own two lips, and hands him the other one. Sinking back into the soft cushion of the backrest, she plucks the lighter out of the pack and lights the cigarette. Her eyes gleam golden in the glow of the flame and she looks absolutely _bewitching_. Gabe resists the urge to chew on the filter, but he’s _definitely_ liking what he sees.

And when that red little number she’s wearing creeps up her thighs, he thinks he’s going to end up crushing his cigarette between his two fingertips.

They smoke in a companionable silence for a while and he wonders why he didn’t schedule an appointment with _her_ earlier too. Amélie had wormed herself into his thoughts at times, even at his lowest. He knows he should guard his heart better, that relying on her companionship too much isn’t a good coping mechanism, and that she was supposed to be a stepping stone for him to be able to go out and date without flipping out about it, but she was supposed to be a lot of things and she turned out to be _even more_. So here he is, with all these images of what he wanted to do _to_ her when he was strung out like a wrung-out rag—and feeling terribly _ashamed_ of them, and all these images of what he wanted to do _with_ her when he got better—and feeling noticeably less ashamed of those.

Gabriel breaches the silence with a kind of nonchalance he doesn’t really feel, “You know, I thought about something _interesting_ we could do tonight.”

_Hands. Stop. Shaking. **Fuck.**_

He holds onto the armrests of the fauteuil.

“ _Tiens, tiens,_ thinking about me in your spare time, Gabriel?” Her teasing’s good-natured and the lilt to her voice pleasant to his ears. Smoke curls around the button of her nose as she speaks. She props one arm on top of the backrest and regards him with amused, heavy-lidded eyes that no longer spark gold but hold a semblance of its glow in their depths.

“Do tell,” Amélie goads him on by slowly crossing one leg over the other, shifting backwards in her seat as she does, showing off those long legs and a hint of thigh.

Gabe smirks, rising to the challenge to become the most dangerous thing in the room once more, and leans forwards. Tonight’s been on his mind for the better part of the week. Relief had flooded his too-tight chest once he’d gotten over his hesitation— _gave in_ — and scheduled this appointment, heart lighter at the knowledge that she would come on over. He takes another puff of his cigarette.

“ _Well_ , old soldiers like me like to hang on to old habits,” he begins, feeling the heavy taste of his cigarette blow open in the cavern of his mouth.

“And if I was still on active duty, my behavior would’ve gotten me in a _fuckload_ of trouble.” Couple of memories spring to mind and his smirk widens, continues “So, I figured I need to work to get some discipline back in my life.” He watches how his words sink in with her, how her expression changes, looking like the cat who caught the canary.

His gut clenches in anticipation. _He wants._

Amélie brings her cigarette back to her mouth, but doesn’t stick it back between her wine-red, open lips just yet, and instead she admits, smirking right back at him, “You’re right, this does sound very _interesting_.”

.


	6. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It’s the funniest thing Gabe’s seen in days and he barks out a laugh, shaking his head. “Let me rephrase that,” he says. “You’re the only one getting off tonight. Not me.”
> 
> Outside, the evening sky darkens overhead, the setting sun somewhere behind the skyline gives the cityscape a whitish lining and the light that streaks through the buildings, falls on the flowerheads of his potted geranium. Amélie blinks slowly and meets his eyes with hers, folding her hands in her lap, and he notices her mouth’s slightly agape.
> 
> She accidentally bumps the tip of her pump against the coffee table.
> 
> There’s a touch of nervous excitement to her voice that brings out her accent even more. “You’ve got an interesting approach to the concept discipline, Gabriel,” she says while drumming her fingertips into the meat of her thighs. “It sounds a bit like punishment.”
> 
> “Do you remember the rules?” He asks then, choosing not to comment on her remark, toying the tip of his tongue against the back of his teeth.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i was really excited to write this chapter so i hope everyone likes it. thank you for being so patient with me!

.

“This is what I had in mind,” Gabe begins, one hand braced against the coffee table, grinding the butt of his cigarette into the ashtray. His gaze’s trained on the outward arch of her throat, as she tilts her head to the right, so her right temple presses against the plush backrest of the sofa.

Amélie’s taking a drag, sultry from head to toe, with her come-hither-stare and crossed knees.

Clearing his throat, he’s suddenly aware of that grimy feeling of smoke clinging to his skin and he wiggles his fingertips in his lap, restless. Gabe continues, “I want you to sit on my face—” and before she gets the chance to interrupt him, he quiets her by teasing humorously, “Wait ‘til I’m finished talking, baby, it’s rude to cut someone off. Hasn’t LA traffic taught you anything? _Heh_. Anyways, I can’t jerk off. So, tonight, _well,_ it’s all on you.”

He pauses, gauging her reaction, backing into the fauteuil until he collides with the backrest, flush against the cushion, his hands rigidly curved over the armrests— _you’d need a crowbar to pry his fingers open._ The taste of tobacco remains stuck to his palate. Amélie moves, elegant and purposeful as she leans in and presses the cigarette stub to the inside of the ashtray.

One small, dying wisp of smoke rises upwards, curling around the shape of her hand.   

“And in the mean time you want me to…” She trails off, one plucked eyebrow drawn up in an arch, and she makes this crude, but slightly unsure pumping gesture with her fist that seems entirely out of character for her. Especially with how she sat on his sofa just a minute ago, prim and proper and provocative.  

It’s the funniest thing Gabe’s seen in days and he barks out a laugh, shaking his head. “Let me rephrase that,” he says. “ _You’re_ the only one getting off tonight. Not me.”

Outside, the evening sky darkens overhead, the setting sun somewhere behind the skyline gives the cityscape a whitish lining and the light that streaks through the buildings, falls on the flowerheads of his potted geranium. Amélie blinks slowly and meets his eyes with hers, folding her hands in her lap, and he notices her mouth’s slightly agape.

She accidentally bumps the tip of her pump against the coffee table.

There’s a touch of nervous excitement to her voice that brings out her accent even more. “You’ve got an interesting approach to the concept discipline, Gabriel,” she says while drumming her fingertips into the meat of her thighs. “It sounds a bit like punishment.”

“Do you remember the rules?” He asks then, choosing not to comment on her remark, toying the tip of his tongue against the back of his teeth.

Tobacco’s got this way of staying in the mouth, stuck to your teeth or your palate long after you’re done with your cigarette. It’s how his mother figured out he picked up smoking from his uncle during his teens, that telltale bad breath, the worst of snitches, and she’d chided him the entire ride back home about the consequences of his actions, not now, but in the long run eventually, yellow nails and yellow teeth, arteries clogging up and lung cancer. So, pretty much at proverbial gunpoint Gabe promised he wouldn’t touch a cigarette again until he got a job.

He drags his tongue over the flat of his teeth and decides he’ll drink another glass of water before they go to the bedroom, just to get rid of the taste.

“I do,” she replies softly, thumbing under the neckline of her dress, the tendons in her neck straining as she tilts her head completely to the side. It occurs to him then, that she must be pulling on her bra strap.

“Repeat them for me,” Gabe demands gently, tapping his left index on the armchair’s armrest. 

“If I don’t use my safeword, you’ll assume I’m going to do whatever you ask of me. I’m not supposed to call you _master_ or _sir_ and…” She pauses abruptly; her shoulders sag and her gaze drops to the ashtray or the magazine on the tabletop. “I’m not allowed to touch myself unless you tell me to, and I’m not to touch you either.”

Gabriel nods and grinning smugly, reaffirms his earlier statement with a sense of finality, “ _Discipline_. It would be punishment if I let you rile me up all nice and good.”

It’s two-thirds a truth; the mind so often gets confused by what the body wants. Or maybe he rigged himself for a fall from the very start, whatnot with him being so isolated from human contact, from human touch for so long, and then he goes about hiring a hooker to ease him into those two things, one at a time, with as end goal to reconnect to both.

God knows he’s had a dry spell for years.

He entertained the possibility that he’d grow emotionally attached and dismissed it rather quickly, too quickly in hindsight, this was supposed to be some therapy on the side after all, but he hadn’t counted on Amélie. He hadn’t expected her to be so… _captivating._

Gabe isn’t in love, he doesn’t have a _crush_ on Amélie, but he’s afraid for a spark to happen if she would touch him, a spark he’s been inching towards since first meeting her.

She makes a sound halfway between a scoff and a dry laugh that drags him from his musings, a red smile on her mouth, and shrugs daintily. Effortlessly, she rises from her seat, and the skirt of her dress which fans out around the hips, falls just as effortlessly above her knees. Amélie prompts, “Let’s agree to disagree, Gabriel.”

“ _Hah_. Alright,” he easily acquiesces, regarding her face, and how the dying light from outside forms a halo around her head and casts a touch of silver to her dark hair. “What’s your safeword, Amélie?”

“My safeword is venin,” she answers and tugs the three-quarter sleeves of her dress down over her elbows.

Gabe gulps down what little was left in his glass and sitting hunched over, clinks the bottom of the glass to the tabletop a couple of times before following her example and standing upright.

He holds his glass loosely with just the tips of his fingers, challenging gravity, and says, “Go on ahead to the bedroom, I’ll be there in a few. Wait for me to start undressing.”

Unsurely Amélie turns around, facing him with her back, and one-handedly brushes her hair to the side, holding the strands in a makeshift ponytail, to show the long line of the dress’ zipper, starting at the first knob of her spine and ending at the base. Her intake of breath’s sharp.

“I’m afraid I’ll need your help anyway,” she says, accentuating the ‘r’ in _afraid_ , looking at him from over her shoulder, a smile on her lips that’s equal measures coy, equal measures seductive.

Gabe swallows reflexively and nods, dumb, dazed, wondering if it was too late to backtrack now.

_Holy shit_ , he thinks to himself, trying to figure out if he might’ve finished his drink too soon because there’s _definitely_ something down his throat right now, _holy fucking shit_. He holds his glass with both hands now, because they’re shaking again and it’s better to be safe than sorry and end with shattered glass all over the floor. His heart hammers in his chest, but it doesn’t escape his notice that she looks visibly relieved at his reaction. They’re both nervous, he realizes then.

Amélie puts a lock of hair behind her ear when she stands face-to-face with him again, a faint blush on her cheeks, just that bit taller than him on her high heels.

“I wouldn’t dream of keeping you waiting,” Gabriel promises and offers her a slanted grin, underscoring a courage he doesn’t really feel with a hint of teeth, and taps a fingernail against the glass in his hands.

She studies him for a moment, involuntarily clenching her hand into a loose fist by her side and staring at him with those pretty eyes of hers, heavy-lidded and framed by long, dark lashes.

“I trust you, Gabriel,” Amélie says oh-so-softly in the heady silence of the living room and gently mirrors his smile before she starts towards the bedroom, leaving him stupefied and warmed deep down his belly, down his gut.

He watches her walk gracefully to the bedroom door and disappear into the gaping darkness beyond the open doorway, and after a short moment, she manages to flip the lights on; the whitish glow looks like an oil spill on the floorboards. He puts his glass on the kitchen counter with a hollow thud, swings the refrigerator door open and grabs the plastic bottle of cooled water, unscrews the cap and takes a big gulp. Wipes his mustache and mouth dry with the back of his trembling hand.

When Gabe enters the bedroom, Amélie’s sitting on the foot-end of his bed, with her hands clutching something in her lap and her high heels kicked off and toppled over on the floor.

“I believe you forgot something,” she says, holding up the red tie he discarded on the bed when he got a phone call from Ana earlier this evening. “Unless you left it here for a reason…”

She trails off then, settling back on her elbows, staring at him expectantly with the tie firmly clenched in her right fist, one eyebrow cocked upwards and a hint of a smirk tugging on the corners of her mouth.

“What reason would that be?” Gabe prompts back, intrigued, and shrugs off his ashen blazer and drapes it over the backrest of his office chair.

Her expression changes: her brows furrow together and she looks away self-consciously, raking her teeth over her bottom lip and staining them with her lipstick and cleaning them with her tongue. Amélie looks back at him and answers, “ _Mon Dieu_ , I honestly thought you wanted to… tie me up or gag me or something… Some cli—” She catches herself mid-word and shakes her head, amends, “I’m sorry for assuming.”

“Do _you_ want to do all those things?” He inquires, leaning against his desk and crossing his arms over his chest, head slightly tilted.

They stare each other for a while as she mulls the question over in her head. She looks down to her lap and rubs the tie between her fingertips. Gabe gives her the time she needs to sort things out in her head, because he isn’t going to push her into something. But Amélie looks _pretty_ open to the idea if the way she fingers his tie is any indication and he wonders if she doesn’t want to seem _too_ eager instead.

She raises her arm and dangles the tie in front of her face like a piece of thread, pinched between her thumb and forefinger. “Are you asking me if I want to _ruin_ your tie with my mouth?” Her eyes search his, pupils wide-blown, like blots of ink, and a smile on her face, saccharine. “Because I’d love to, _Gabriel._ ”

“ _Shit,_ yeah. Okay,” Gabe stumbles over his words, fumbling with the buckle of his belt. “Time to _fucking_ strip, sweetheart.”

Her laughter bounces off the bedroom walls. Amélie pushes herself up, stands and twirls around, her skirt flaring out like a tutu, shows her back to him, and like before, swipes her hair to the side so he can unzip her dress. He swiftly pulls his belt through the loops of his pants and puts it on the desk, the buckle clanking on the plywood tabletop. The light catches onto the bronze zipper like liquid and reflects golden down her spine.

There’s a change in the atmosphere when Gabe stands behind her and slowly tugs the zipper down, exposing bare skin and the lace of her bra, like an electric undercurrent to the air they breathed.

His knuckles brush down her back the entire way and she arches into the touch; her head tilted towards him. Strands of hair slip free from her grasp. He sucks in his exhale when he’s done, hit the end of the line, and helps slide the sleeves of the dress over her shoulders, even if she didn’t ask. Standing so close that the slightest movement would have them back to chest, so close that if Amélie would reach back to unhook her bra, her hands would bump into his midriff.

His hands were still on her bare shoulders, the lacy straps of her bra soft under his palms.

Amélie slightly turns, the crown of her head reaching to his nose, her hair slips free entirely as she brings her hand down the front of her neck, and her gaze falls on one of his hands, and her breath is shaky, like she tastes the static too. Gabriel abruptly lets go of her shoulders, as if electrocuted, and takes a step back, nearly stepping onto one of her heels.

“Go on,” he says and swallows reflexively – the inside of his mouth drier than the desert –  when she pushes her left arm out of the sleeve and leaves the front of the dress bunched up around her hips.

_See-through_ , the word flashes through his mind like a neon sign, _her bra’s see-through because why the fuck not?_ Gabe’s having trouble undoing the first button of his shirt, his fingers suddenly too big and too clumsy. Her nipples strain against the fabric, a dark pink and already hard. She watches him struggle for a moment, smiling coyly as she glides her knuckles down her sternum, to the point where the two lacy triangles of her bra join, and then further down her abdomen, to the lace pinned to the elastic band of her panties that peeks above the skirt of her dress.

The dress ends up around her ankles. Amélie steps out of it and bends over to pick it up and splays it over the foot-end of the bed. Her panties are see-through too.

Gabe manages to unbutton his shirt, shrugs it off and folds it over the backrest of the chair, over his blazer, and self-consciously tugs on the short sleeve of the tight, white undershirt he wears under his button-up, to make sure his scarred shoulder remains hidden from sight.

And it’s far from a pretty sight; the scar covers the knob of his shoulder and the edge of his collarbone and itches like hell sometimes; the tissue’s thick and red, like someone lathered it over his skin with a butter knife. He got pulled from active duty and had to take occupational therapy for a few months even, back in the day, to make sure his movement wasn’t impeded.  

The legs of the chair scrape over the floor when he pulls the chair backwards. He sits down, crosses his ankle over his kneecap and clamps onto his ankle with one hand, about to pull his sock off, but pauses when Amélie slowly slides one of her bra straps down her arm.

“You gonna put up a show for me?” Gabe asks, settling back and propping his elbow on his desk.

She hums lowly under her breath and pulls the other strap down, purring, “Don’t I always _, Gabriel?_ Put up a show for _you_.”

“Yeah you do, baby. You do.” It sounds too sincere, too _vulnerable,_ to his own ears, whatnot with the breathy quality of his voice, and he holds onto his foot with both hands; the muscles in his arms taut under his skin.

Amélie maintains eye-contact with him when she brings her hands to her back and unhooks her bra. He looks down at her naked breasts, small and pale and perky, and then further down her smooth tummy, down to the see-through panties with the slight wet patch in front and the faint stretchmarks along her thighs.

“ _God_ ,” he whispers, said in such a desperate tone of voice that it could’ve been any other word. But the meaning wouldn’t change. “I can’t _fucking_ wait for you to sit on my face.”

Her lips curve into a pleased smile. “I can’t wait too,” she says humorously, canting her hips from left to right as she slides her panties down to her knees. She steps out of them, not once losing her balance, and folds them and puts them on top of her dress, on the foot of the bed.

Gabe pulls off his socks, stands back up and unbuttons and unzips his black pants. Aware of her heated gaze, he takes a deep breath to steel himself, shucks off his pants, rolls up his shirt a bit, and hooks his thumbs around the thick elastic band of his CK boxer briefs and pushes them down the sharp of his hipbones, exposing first the coarse curls of hair on his pubic bone and then, gradually, the shaft of his half-hard cock, his balls, his scarred, muscular thighs. He slides the boxer briefs down his legs to his knees, to his ankles.

Feigning nonchalance, he steps out of the CK’s and kicks them aside.

Amélie watches intently how he smoothens his skintight undershirt back around his narrow hips – he knows how the shirt outlines his pecs and abs – and absentmindedly starts to wrap the tie around her knuckles, a clumsy imitation of how he’d wrap his hands before hitting the punching bag at the gym. The tail-end of the tie dangles limply along her forearm.

“I thought you wanted to ruin it with your mouth,” Gabe quips easily, nodding at her hand when she tilts her head and cocks an eyebrow.

Laughing softly, she rounds up on him, not entirely too comfortable in her naked skin, but so much more than he is, that electric undercurrent buzzing around again and he recognizes it as nervous energy. Amélie offers him her hand and reassures firmly, “Oh. But I most certainly _do…_ ”

“You can check the second drawer in my wardrobe if you wanna pick a tie for me to cuff you with,” Gabe offers as he unwraps the tie from around her knuckles.

When he’s done, she steps closer to the desk and strokes one fingertip over his belt.

“How about this? Is it real leather?” She asks.

“Yeah… Here lemme…” He says, looping the belt around her wrists and pulling it through the buckle as far as he can. “Not too tight, is it? Does it scuff?”

Amélie checks to see how far her wrists can go apart and answers, “No, no, it’s alright.”

“Okay. Now for the gag… I’m going to stuff it in your mouth, so you can spit it out easily if you want to use your safeword,” Gabe explains, balling the tail-end of the tie together.

She obediently opens her mouth wide, as far as her jaw can go, and while porn tries to sell an image like this as masturbation fodder, it’s so much different without a forced expression. He never thought stuff like this was hot, but because it’s _Amélie_ and because of how she gets into it, he gets into it too. Carefully Gabriel stuffs the gag inside, not as deep that it touches to the back of her teeth, just enough so she has something to bite on.

The bright red tie drapes down her sternum when she has her chin raised and draws even more attention to her small, perky tits.

“Uncomfortable?” He questions, bringing his hands back to his sides in case he does something stupid and ends up touching her out of concern or _want_.

Amélie straightens her shoulders and shakes her head no.

After regarding her for a moment, Gabriel does something _stupidly_ sentimental and brings some wayward strands of hair behind her ear, unable to help himself, then he walks over to the side of the bed where he usually sleeps and pushes the pillows aside and goes to lie down flat on his back. Her footsteps are almost inaudible. The edge of the mattress dips under the weight of her knee. Amélie swings one leg over his shoulders, looking down at him with her hair falling around her torso and shoulders, veiling the glow of the bedroom lights above them.

The tie dangles a couple of inches above his forehead.

Her pussy’s gorgeous, shaven, a pale pink, and her inner lips already slick, oozing, and her heady, tarty scent floods his nostrils. She lowers herself down on him, straddling his face, her knees on each side of his head, her elbows propped onto the headboard, and with her hands tied together like that, it looks like she’s about to pray. Gabe braces his palms against her ass, digs his fingers into the meat of her cheeks, and tongues her slit up to her clit, brushing his beard against her sensitive skin.

Amélie jolts upwards a bit at the sensation and spreads her knees wider. He repeatedly flicks his tongue against her clit, holding her steady above him and preventing her from bucking too wildly against his face.

His hands slide up and down her flanks, back to her plump ass, pawing and kneading. He relentlessly laps at her hot, puffy cunt with the flat of his tongue, getting his mouth and chin and beard drenched in her translucent slick and his own spit, and he gets off on the muffled groans and moans she makes; his cock’s hard and flushed at the tip, bobbing against his underbelly whenever he shifts around a bit. The bedsheets feel nice and soft under his half-naked body.

She jerks abruptly above him when he holds her up at the hips. He pushes his tongue up her cunt and starts to tongue-fuck her in earnest, exhaling hotly through his nose, the air puffing against her swollen clit.

Struggling for purchase, Amélie puts her forearms flatly on the lip of the headboard and bows her face against her bound wrists, whining around the makeshift gag. Gabe loves the taste of her and fucks her pussy open with his tongue, thumbing the sharp outline of her hipbones and pressing his fingertips into her waist. She comes hard, cunt gushing, thick thighs shuddering above him, spastic ticks all over the soft skin there, and then slumping, hiding away the bedroom lights with her body, breathing hard through her nose.

She looks down at him; her forehead’s glimmering with sweat, her lipstick smudged along the wet corners of her mouth, her nostrils wide, the tie still clenched between grit teeth.

Gabe doesn’t intend to let up on her however, and helps her ease back down on his face, puffing hot breath against her oversensitive cunt. There are still a few light tremors sneaking over her thighs in the aftermath of the orgasm. He sucks her slick-shining labia into his mouth and suckles on them and teases them thoroughly with his tongue.

His hands slide up her ribcage towards the underside of her tits and she moans lowly around the gag, a sound that goes straight to his cock, makes his cockhead stain his white undershirt with precum.

When Gabriel’s fully cupping her breasts, coarse palms sliding roughly over her hard nipples and fingertips pressing into the soft, supple skin, Amélie takes him by surprise and holds his hands into place; the leather of his belt scuffs against the back of his wrists, and her thumbs are pressed tightly against the back of his hands. She straightens, tips her head back, denying him the sight of her expression, and grinds her dripping cunt down harder on his mouth, demanding a second orgasm. 

He catches onto her clit when she careens her hips backwards, sucks it firmly into his mouth and squeezes her tits.  

Every sound – the sheets twisting underneath his legs, the hammering heartbeat drumming between his ears, the squelching sounds of her sloppy cunt – falls away at the strangled sob that Amélie makes around the gag, filthy and erotic and absolutely… _breathtaking_. Her orgasm’s shorter than the previous one. Her thick, stretch-marked thighs are quivering less violently too but her pussy’s steadily drooling slick onto his bottom lip, and his chin and his beard.

She puts her weight onto her knees and raises herself up a bit, ready to slink off his face and settle down onto the pillows next to his head.

_And wouldn’t that sight be hot as fuck_ , Gabe muses quietly, delving his fingertips into the camber of her breasts as a sign that she’s not supposed to move away yet, _wouldn’t she look stunning with her brains all tongue-fucked out of her head, chest heaving and thighs lathered in her own pussy juices?_

Aloud he asks, “Aren’t you up for round three, baby?”

It’s a goddamned shame that he couldn’t have said those words straight against her swollen cunt, because the rumble of his voice and his hot breath would’ve had that pretty little hole _quivering._ Gabe honest to god wants to spend hours exploring her gorgeous pussy with his mouth and his fingers, make him forget about how desperate his cock is for friction, touch, _anything_ to ease the pressure in his balls.

Amélie whimpers pathetically when he nuzzles against her left leg, coaxing her to settle back down again.

His jaw’s going to start aching when he goes down on her for the third time. She releases his hands, opting to steady herself against the headboard again, hips bucking forwards, spine curved in a delicate arch, her hair probably falling down her back pin-straight, the tips brushing softly over his upper legs. Gabe turns his head and slowly presses a soft kiss to her inner left thigh, meanwhile dragging his hands down her ribs, stomach and abdomen, fingers spread open to touch as much of her skin as he can.

Her breathing’s haggard, but less rushed than when she came down from her first high, slower, more deliberate.

Amélie’s on edge when he gives little licks and gentle kisses to her slick thigh on his way to her clit. One hand comes to rest on her right hipbone, while his other dips lower, over the curve of her pussy, and she raises herself up a bit more so he can delve his tongue into her sopping cunt again. His thumb comes to rub at her slippery, hard clit.

Gabe tongue-fucks thoroughly, savoring the light tart tang of her slick when he licks over her slit and plunges his tongue back into her cunt.

When the third orgasm hits her – and has her buckling over, the buckle of the belt clanking against the headboard, her hair swaying forwards with the movement – Gabriel eases her through it and diligently continues to eat her out, ignoring the ache on his jaw and the strain on his arm muscles from the awkward angle. He feels how the rim of her pussy clenches around his tongue when she’s coming.

With a gentle pat on the ass, Gabe lets her know she can get off his face.

Almost instantaneously he misses the warmth of her body above him and her slick’s left to dry coolly on his face. He sucks his thumb into his mouth for a moment and licks the juices clean off. Amélie lets the balled-up tie fall limply from her open mouth and keens helplessly at the sight of his face, drawing her knees up to her chest and shivering all over, coming down from the high.

The tie’s a mess of lipstick stains and drool and teeth marks.

He settles upright and stretches his arms out in front of him, the corners of his mouth twitch into a content smirk when he hears a satisfying pop. He tugs on the sleeve of his scarred shoulder and leans back against the headboard; his cock slips over his abdomen, catching in the moist patch on the undershirt. Catching his breath, Gabe moves over to undo the buckle and carefully slips the belt loose from her wrists.

Amélie rubs at her right wrist, desperately seeking his gaze, and says his name over and over, like a litany, in a scratchy, tentative tone of voice, followed by a low whimper.

He’s read about this before, _a_ _sub drop it’s called he recalls_ , when the euphoria dissipates and the intensity of the session leaves the body bereft and the senses dazed. It’s not purely physical. Amélie’s left to crave a kind of intimacy Gabriel isn’t sure he can give her in his current mental state, but _oh god_ is he willing to try, for her.

“You were amazing, baby,” Gabe praises honestly and takes her right wrist in one hand, gently, starting to massage the reddish skin with the plush pad of his thumb. “So, so good for me, always so good.”

With his free hand, he gropes around for the tie so he can clean her mouth of drool; there’s spit all over her chin, and her teeth must be aching from constantly biting into the gag. Gabriel carefully dabs the tail-end of the tie over the corners of her mouth and rubs the remains of lipstick from her lips, whispering sweet little nothings. Reflexively, she leans into his touch, regarding him with watery eyes, and like in the movies, she searches for his mouth first.

“I’m sorry,” Amélie finally says when he takes her other wrist into his hand and massages the tenderized skin there too. “For a moment, I don’t know what came over me…” here she offers a shaky smile and continues, “You were so… great and.. _._ ”

“Amélie, don’t mention it. Nothing to say sorry for.”

Shifting against the headboard, Gabe’s promptly reminded of the hard-on between his legs, huffs in frustration and mutters, “Listen, I’m going to grab a cold shower real quick and then you can have a nice long hot shower after. I’ll fix you something sweet to drink in the meantime. Hot cocoa okay for you?”

Her gaze flicks to the space between them, then to his slick cockhead and the transparent quality of the undershirt’s wet fabric, stuck to his abdomen, back to his face again. He can tell what she’s thinking.

“But—” He interrupts her, panicked. If she tells him that she wants nothing more than to touch him, Gabe doesn’t know what it’d do to him, emotionally. Not a spark, but a bonfire, something gone out of control.

“Not yet… I… Not yet, okay?” It sounds lame to his own ears, but the distance he puts between their bodies punctuates how much he means this rejection. He gets up.

Amélie looks put off for a moment, struggling through her own drop still, her eyebrows drawn together in light frustration and confusion, before she looks at his face and nods. Her expression softens and she says, “I understand, _Gabriel_.”

Not only the words, but the sincerity in her voice too give him pause. Gabe weakly smiles down at her, leans in and puts a lock of sweat-slicked hair behind her ear. She touches her hand to his and slightly turns her head to press a kiss to his coarse palm, her eyelids slid closed. Cliché as it sounds, his heart skips a beat.

Hesitantly, he withdraws his hand, turns and walks to the bathroom door, feeling silly and like a coward, naked from the waist down and cock still hard against his underbelly.

“I’ll be back in a few,” Gabe says, white undershirt bunched up around his waist, drumming his fingertips against the doorframe. “I’ll make you a hot cocoa after. If you get cold, you can huddle up under the sheets or mess with the heater, the remote’s on the nightstand.”

Gabe disappears into the bathroom and pulls the door shut behind him, hides his face in the palms of his hands and breathes out harshly, feels his own hot breath puff against his slick mouth and chin. _Fuck what a hot mess_ , he thinks and for good measure, whispers the swearword in the heels of his palms again, _fuck._ He tugs the undershirt over his head, drops it to the floor and rolls his neck to get the cramps out.

Taking a cold shower doesn’t do more than get rid of his hard-on.

When he steps out of the cubicle, his mind stops racing for a second or two, coming to the realization that he forgot to take a fresh pair of underwear and a new undershirt from his wardrobe. Gabe doesn’t want to tempt fate by asking what more could go wrong – but _seriously now_ , what else could? – dries himself off from head to toe and wraps a towel around his waist.

Since there’s no way he’s going back out there with his scarred shoulder exposed, he grabs a smaller towel from the open drawers and drapes it around his shoulders.

All by all considered, Gabe wasted ten minutes in the bathroom and welcomes the sight of Amélie sitting on the foot-end of his bed, one foot tucked under the other leg, huddled up under the covers. She perks up noticeably when she sees him— _or maybe_ , the logical part of his brain berates, _she wants to take a shower since she’s so sticky from the number you pulled on her._ He returns her smile with an awkward, lop-sided grin and gestures to the open doorway.

“Go on ahead,” Gabriel says, self-consciously tugging on the towel to make sure the scarred part of his clavicle is covered.

She’s all loose-limbed grace and elegance when she pushes the sheets off her shoulders and stands up. Some strands of hair are plastered over her sweaty forehead and she combs them out of her face. He scrapes his throat when she stretches her arms out above her head, ogling her tits and her smooth abdomen and her shaven cunt; the slick and spit that are left to dry on her pubic bone and between her thighs glimmers in the bedroom lights. Amélie gathers her clothes and walks on over.

“ _Merci_ ,” she says, looking at him, one hand on the doorframe, before she ducks inside.

He feels the warmth in the pit of his belly, high on the fact that he made Amélie come three times with just his mouth, jittery from something as small as a simple, chaste kiss pressed to the palm of his hand. But at the same time, the knot in his stomach tightens: he feels guilty too, about not letting Amélie reciprocate, about not being able to hold her flush against his chest, not being able to kiss her tenderly when she obviously needed the tenderness. She looked so earnest in that moment, wanting him as badly as he wanted to be able to do all those things for her.

Gabe clenches the towel around his shoulders with both hands and squeezes tightly, takes a deep, steadying breath and mutters under his breath, _you’re a goddamned idiot, Reyes, but what else is new?_

He shakes his head – trying to get rid of all these thoughts and _feelings_ –  pulls the towel from around his shoulders and throws it on the bed.

By the time Amélie emerges from the bedroom, showered and fully dressed, Gabe has a warm cup of instant hot cacao waiting for her on the kitchen counter. He got the instant cacao as a sample by a thirty-dollar purchase and the one he tried tasted sickeningly sweet, at least in his own opinion, but after their intense session, he figured Amélie needed the sugar. He poured another glass of water for himself.

They’re staring at each other in silence, Amélie from over the brim of the polka-dotted mug and Gabe from where he was leaning against the stove, half-hidden in the darkness, dressed in a comfortable hoodie and a pair of sweats.

“Do you like it?” He asks when she takes a sip.

She puts the mug back on the counter, chuckling awkwardly, and replies, “Sorry, but this… this is the sweetest drink I’ve ever had in my life. It tastes a bit chemical even.”

“Yeah, _well_ , I never believed you would actually _like_ it, but, you know, thought you might need it after what we did…” Gabe trails off, rubbing the back of his neck and sheepishly looking down to the floor.

“I appreciate the thought,” Amélie answers, laughing a bit. “I really liked what we did though, and I just, _bon_ , I just wanted to say sorry again for my behavior afterwards. I really didn’t mean to get so… _so_ …” she looks puzzled, drumming her fingertips on the countertop, “What’s that word for _collante_ , again? In English?”

“ _Collante_?” He echoes unsurely, scratching the shaved side of his head. “Fuck if I know.”

Amélie makes a gesture with her hand, as if that would help her remember the right expression, and explains “It’s like dependent but worse…” she scrunches nose as if the word is on the forefront of her mind but refuses to pop up like she wants it to. “ _Ugh_. Sticky?”

“You mean _clingy_?” Gabe prompts and crosses his arms across his chest, head tilted to the side, eyebrows furrowed together. “Or _needy_ would work too, I guess. But look, I told you before, it’s okay. Don’t worry your pretty head about it.”

“It just… wasn’t very professional of me,” she says softly, before cupping the mug with both hands and taking a sip.

Anxiety tightens the knot in his stomach and Gabriel has half a mind to ramble, to say that he doesn’t want her to be professional when she’s with him, in fact he’d rather have her be herself around him, always. But that’s a whole can of worms that really doesn’t need to be opened right now. He watches her slowly drink her hot cacao under the bright glare of the LED lamps installed above the kitchen counter, but it’s hard to remain coldblooded when all these doubts haunt about in his mind. He clenches his hands, not knowing what else to do with them.

“But you know,” Amélie begins, looking at him purposefully. “It felt good. It felt really, really good being vulnerable and open for a change. And–” here she puts the mug back on the countertop with a hollow, clunky clang and laughs a bit awkwardly. “I’m glad it was with you, Gabriel.”

The honesty in her voice hits him like a sledgehammer to the gut. He swallows dryly, reflexively, a deafening crunch between his own two ears, and recomposes himself, shaking off all his little doubts and insecurities. It’s hard to listen to the logical part of his brain— _you’re still just one of her customers, don’t get your head up in the clouds now—_ when his heart’s clawing its way up his throat, ready to get cut up on the sharpness of her beautiful smile.

“Good, because I’d love to go down on you like that again,” Gabe jokes, basking in the warmth, pride and affection he feels at her words, donning a shit-eating grin.

She hides her mouth behind her hand when she starts to snicker, a silly-sounding laugh that makes his grin that much wider. Right now, Gabe wants nothing more than to enjoy Amélie’s company and forget about all the emotional implications her presence has on him, but he has a flight tomorrow. A week from home has never seemed so long.

By the time, they’re standing in the entryway of his apartment, another half hour has passed; when she was finishing up her drink, they talked about his flight to Illinois and about travelling in general. Amélie confessed she misses her hometown in France the most during winter. _Winters in LA are nothing like the ones in Annecy._

He’s just helped her get into her coat when she asks him to show her the time on his phone.

“Wait a sec, I left it in the bedroom,” Gabe says, patting the baggy pockets of his sweatpants to make sure he didn’t take his phone with him.

The thought of asking her to add her number to his contacts pops up in his mind when he pushes the bedroom door open. In that BDSM article about sub drops, the advice was given to monitor the emotional behavior of the sub days or even weeks after the session. He gets his phone from the back pocket of his pants, discarded on the floor.

Now that he’s seen Amélie experience such a drop first hand, he wonders if he should keep in touch more regularly, outside of their _appointments_ , wonders if she’d like that and if her agency allows it. Wonders if this is the best or the worst idea he’s ever had, but now that it’s stuck in his head it won’t get back out.

Gabriel makes his way back to the small entry hall, anxiety slowly working his insides up in knots with all this thinking. Amélie rummages for something in her purse, but looks up when he returns, a bit distracted, and smiles at him.

“Hey…” he begins, balling his hands into fists after giving her his phone.

She looks away from the screen, prompting him to continue, “Yes?”

“Do you think you could… _I mean_ , would it be okay if you’d add yourself to my contacts?” His eyes widen when she raises an eyebrow at him. Gabe tries not to backpedal too hard and wonders how the hell he survived past forty. “I mean I understand if your agency has some rules about this shit, and if you don’t want to—”

“I want to,” Amélie interrupts, a glint of amusement in her eyes and along the corners of her mouth. “Could you send me pictures from your trip? I haven’t had a holiday in _years_.”

“You got snapchat?” He asks, rubbing the back of his head.

“I do,” she says, swiping a finger over the screen of his phone. Her eyebrows knit together when she finds out that the phone demands a code to unlock, and she sheepishly hands it back to him.

Afterwards, after she put her number into his contacts and he added her on his snapchat, and after she told him the price for the evening and he tipped her two hundred fifty for good measure, they’ve made their way outside to where she parked her car and take their goodbyes on the curb. He has his hands stuffed in the pouch of his hoody and she’s tugging on the collar of her gray overcoat.

They both hesitate to take the first step and leave; the electric undercurrent from earlier in the bedroom, when he helped her undress, seems to have returned now they’re standing so close together again.

“Drive home safely,” Gabriel mutters in the crisp evening air, admiring the mellow glow the streetlight gives to her face.

Amélie puts her hands into the pockets of her coat and replies gently, “And you have a safe flight tomorrow, Gabriel. Text me when you’ve landed, will you?”

“I will, promise.”

There’s nothing more to add, but Gabe wishes he could find something else to say, something to keep her for a couple minutes longer. He’s exhausted however, from the sex, from all the emotions and anxiety, and he knows the second he lies down in bed, he’ll succumb to sleep, the clothes on the floor and draped over his chair be damned.

“I should probably head home now,” she says reluctantly, looking off to the side with a soft, wistful smile.

Gabe breathes out and huddles his shoulders forwards to hide his ears from the slight cold. “Yeah. _Okay_ … Thanks again, and _uh_ , goodbye, Amélie.”

“Anytime…” she murmurs in response, peering at him with half-hooded eyes. For a moment, she looks like she might lean in to press a kiss to his cheek, but the movement’s aborted halfway through, and the smile she gives him is a bit clipped.

Amélie softly says goodbye, fishes her car key from her pocket and unlocks, walks over to the driver’s side and gets inside. He looks down at the pavement when she starts the car and heaves a sigh.

By this time tomorrow evening, he’ll have landed on General Mitchell in Milwaukee and he should probably be halfway to Ana’s home in Rockford already.

_And by this time tomorrow you’ll have texted Amélie about your flight and about how the stop in Detroit was rushed as usual with no opportunity to sit down and enjoy a fucking coffee_ , Gabe thinks contently, looking forward to being able to do that, as he watches the red taillights of Amélie’s car disappear when she rounds the corner.

He shakes his head, unable to keep the satisfied smile from his face, and heads back to the entrance of his apartment block, ready to crawl under the covers and call it a night.

.


	7. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It’s silly that this is the first time he sees Amélie, during the day and at her own home. Even if it’s just a selfie, it still counts in his book.
> 
> She reclines in a chair, smiling so wide her eyes crinkle, an arm thrown over the backrest, the kitchen interior in the background, and in the bottom right corner of the screen, a bouquet of violets. As he tries to soak up as many details as he can in those eight seconds, another notification from her rolls down the screen, a chat message.
> 
> Her makeup’s bolder than usual though: there’s a peachy blush on her cheeks, her eyebrows are colored to look bigger, sharper and darker, and her metallic eyeshadow matches the lamé blazer over the almost-transparent blouse she wore the first time they met.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I managed to update! Finally! I'm sorry for being so slow, but work is demanding a lot from me rn.

.

When Gabe draws the white blinds in the living room open, he notices it’s slightly overcast outside.

They said on the weather forecast it might rain in the morning, but looking at how the greyish cloud sheets stretch thin, and how easily the 10 AM sun glimpses through, he suspects it might clear out before lunch.

Gabe stares through the window for a moment or two, tapping one finger against the glass in time with his thoughts, methodologically checking off the things on his to-do list. He put the latest edition of the Military Review away in a hardcover case, cleaned out the ashtray and stowed his cacti away in the cupboard so they could grow their flower buds over winter.

Afterwards he did the laundry and tidied up his wardrobe, double-checked his suitcase and made sure the plane ticket was downloaded to his phone.

Turning towards the coffee table on autopilot, his mind inevitably drifts back to Amélie and what they did last night.

Maybe other people would consider him weird or _pathetic_ even, but instead of washing the tie she used as a gag with the rest of his clothes, he stuffed it in his suitcase, between a pair of CK boxer-briefs and a button-up. Stolen away like some guests take the soap and shampoo from their hotel rooms.

Gabriel picks the elephant-shaped watering can up from the coffee table and moves over to his potted geranium; the water inside sloshes loudly with every slightly-uncoordinated step he takes. With the snout, he nudges a heavy, white flowerhead away to pour water over the potting soil.

 _Two more weeks,_ Gabe estimates with pursed lips, thumbing a few stray waterdrops from the soft, white petals, _then I’ll have to prune and cut back on watering._

Slightly shaking his head, he walks back over to his kitchen, puts the watering can back in the cabinet under the sink and takes a moment to stretch his arms above his head and roll his neck from left to right, get the kinks out of his system. Gabe slept like a log, so worn out from his session with Amélie that he didn’t need to bother with any sleeping pills for once in days.

With a passing glance at his watch – _the cab he called an hour ago should arrive in fifteen minutes_ – Gabe pulls out his phone and scrolls down the new emails in his professional inbox. There’s only one message with a red exclamation mark next to the title, but he’s just included in the CC so he figures it can wait for a while.

Ana sent him a snap of her settee, decked out with a quilt that’s at least a decade old, two big pillows and a warm-looking blanket, and the caption, « Doesn’t your bed look comfy for tonight? »   

« Fit for a real king, » Gabe promptly types, a sardonic response with a passive-aggressive smiley like she’s grown accustomed of expecting, and swipes right.

Back in the column of contacts, he looks pensively at Amélie’s name; his thumb hovering indecisively over the empty speech bubble. Would it be weird to snap her a pic of his empty apartment, or a selfie? She hasn’t sent him any messages yet and Gabe’s uncomfortable with taking the first step, feeling like he’s overestimating his importance to her in some way.

After another split-second of hesitation, Gabriel stuffs his phone back in the pocket of his jeans. It’s time to get going anyway, he reasons.

Without the sunlight falling in from the windows, the living room could leave a somber impression on people; the sleek gray of his electric fireplace falls flat in the dim lighting; it’s hard to make out the individual books on the shelves, and the overall dark colors of the walls and the floorboards crowd together on the actual space of the room. Gabe walks over to the sofa and puts his tablet away in a worn leather bookbag.

It always felt strangely homey to him. Even if the atmosphere’s different from a dreary, overcast morning, Gabe feels most at ease in the late evenings, reading the hours away in his armchair or since recently, waiting with slight anxiety for Amélie to come over.

He puts the hard-cover suitcase on its four wheels, pops the handle up and loops the strap of the bookbag he’s going to check in as hand luggage over the poles of the suitcase handle.

The wheels make a soft _skrrt_ - _ing_ noise when they roll over the floor.

Time proves to be a fickle thing once again when he’s locked the door behind him and made his way downstairs, through the reception with its twenty-something mailboxes lined up against the wall, all the way to the edge of the curb where he told the taxi company to come pick him up.

Five minutes never feels like five minutes.

Gabe knows for sure that the five minutes he spends waiting for his cab doesn’t feel like the five minutes it takes to check in his suitcase or the five minutes to put his hand luggage through the x-ray at the security check. He checks his phone again just to have something to do.

Facebook has a list of notifications he doesn’t really bother checking. His family tends to overshare Buzzfeed articles or whatnot and ever since Reinhardt retired, he seems adamant on documenting as much of his life as possible.

Deciding most of the new stuff on his dash was irrelevant anyway, Gabriel opts to put his phone away, lights a cigarette and looks around a bit, observing his surroundings. While he seizes up the pairs of CCTV cameras peering from up high the walls of the apartment complex, he makes a mental note to put his lighter away in his suitcase before he checks in.

It’s a thought Gabe tries to hold on to during the ride to the airport.

The first thing he notices when the cab pulls up the sidewalk is the damaged paintwork along the bumper of the car, the black paint chipped away as if someone took some steel wool and started rubbing there in hard, uneven strokes. He crushes the butt of his cigarette with the heel of his sneaker and gets in.

His cab driver seems friendly enough, a woman somewhere in her late thirties who speaks in a heavy Jamaican accent and wears her dreadlocks up high in a bun.

When she figures out Gabe isn’t one for small talk, she puts on an afrobeat song and hums along under her breath, drumming her fingers on the steering wheel.

Watching the scenery pass by on the Harbor Freeway gets boring after a while. It’s always the same view; a brick wall, street lanterns, concrete, cars, the sky and bits of rooftop and tree you can see peeking above the wall. Gabe slouches in his seat, ignoring the stale smell inside the cab, and opens his snapchat again.

Ana sent him a message, « The king will have to settle for a breakfast without bacon though. »

He snorts and starts to type up a reply when a new snapchat notification slides down from the top of his screen.

It’s from Amélie.

For a moment Gabe doesn’t know what to do and if the cab driver would look in the rearview mirror, she’d see him frozen on the backseat, phone clenched tightly in his huge hands and knees drawn together. The screen has already faded to black when he snaps back to reality. He takes a deep, steadying breath, slides the conversation with Ana away and opens her pic.

It’s silly that this is the first time he _sees_ Amélie, during the day and at her own home. Even if it’s just a selfie, it still counts in his book.

She reclines in a chair, smiling so wide her eyes crinkle, an arm thrown over the backrest, the kitchen interior in the background, and in the bottom right corner of the screen, a bouquet of violets. As he tries to soak up as many details as he can in those eight seconds, another notification from her rolls down the screen, a chat message.

Her makeup’s bolder than usual though: there’s a peachy blush on her cheeks, her eyebrows are colored to look bigger, sharper and darker, and her metallic eyeshadow matches the lamé blazer over the almost-transparent blouse she wore the first time they met.

His stomach cramps up a bit at the realization that she’s probably readied herself for an appointment with a client, but he doesn’t _want_ to overthink and work himself up in a fit right now. He’s already a bit stressed out; LAX is always too bright, too crowded and too loud.

When Gabe blinks, he can still see the image on the back of his eyelids; the screen switched back to the contact list.

 _What does it matter that Amélie’s going out? She isn’t your girlfriend or anything_ , Gabriel chastises abruptly, _now stop bullshitting yourself and daydream about that pretty smile some more._

Amélie’s message was pretty straightforward, capped off with a smiley face at the end, « I hope you see this before you get on the plane. Have fun on your trip and don’t forget to send me some pictures. »

His chest feels lighter when he rereads her text and replays her snap. Gabe slouches into the backseat and looks outside the window with a dopey smile on his face. They’re driving along the curve to interstate 105, the birches along the side of the road blend together with the rest of the scenery.

After they’ve passed another bridge, Gabe holds up his phone, makes a short vid with the caption that he’s on his way and sends it to Jack, Ana and Amélie. Somewhat unsurely, he pushes on the camera button and finds himself staring at a reflection of himself.

His beanie is pulled down low over his forehead, covering the scar over his scalp, and his hesitant expression only seems to highlight his wrinkles and scars.

Gabriel thinks back on Amélie’s easygoing smile and forces himself to relax. _It’s a fucking selfie._ The corners of his mouth twitch upwards into a half-smile and without thinking, he presses down on the screen.

With how the cab’s driving so fast, the view through the rearview window’s a blur, but he looks _decent_ enough, Gabe supposes, somewhat apprehensive maybe, like he’s cornered on the backseat of the car.

_« Here’s the first real one. »_

Amélie doesn’t respond for the remainder of the drive.

Self-depreciating thoughts take a few jabs at his confidence the longer Amélie doesn’t send anything back, but Gabe tries to stay levelheaded, swallowing down a dry lump in his throat, and keeps busy on his phone. He chats some more with Ana and continues reading an interesting article about counterintelligence in Afghanistan he saved to his phone last Thursday night.

When Gabe looks back up from his screen, the sky’s cleared out and they’re taking the exit Sepulveda North. There’s a dull throbbing between his eyes from reading on the small screen of his phone.

He tips the driver ten bucks for getting out of the cab and helping him with his suitcase unasked. People are crowding the drop-off zone already. Sunlight reflects harshly off all the glass and Gabe squints his eyes, rummaging around the bookbag for his sunglasses. After putting his shades on, he walks over to the closest smoking zone and lights another cigarette.

Airports are strange in a sense.

Everything between check-in and take-off is a weird mixture of stress and boredom. You always get that nagging feeling when you’re at the check-in counter that you might’ve forgotten something, your passport or your wallet or your charger. Then you’re at the security check, you go through the motions, rushing to stuff everything back in your hand luggage because there’s never enough space for everyone at once. And once you’re at your gate, you’re bored to tears of course and time passes by slower than ever.

His chest constricts tightly with anxiety when he maneuvers himself through a throng of people to get to his gate.

Starbucks cup in hand, Gabe settles down on the edge of an empty row of plastic chairs in front of the huge windows looking out over the runway and dumps his bookbag in the seat next to him. Nobody can sit down next to him this way.

Taking a sip from his now-lukewarm americano, Gabriel connects to the free wi-fi and frowns in surprise when he sees a new snapchat notification.

 _Don’t get your hopes up now_ , Gabe thinks bitterly when he opens the app, _Amélie doesn’t owe you a goddamned thing after all_. When he sees a red square in front of her name on top of his contacts, his breath hitches and his coffee almost threatens to drip from the corners of his mouth. He swallows with a grimace.  

And his heart stutters against his ribcage, self-satisfied, as if to sing-song the words _look, she must like you after all._

She must’ve taken the selfie in a rush. Her camera’s unfocused and the pic suffers from overexposure by the sun, highlighting one side of her profile and the honeyed brown in her dark hair. Across her collarbone, the caption reads cheekily _« Give me a smile next time »_ and a winking emoji. There’s a hint of concentration in her expression though, a small wedge between her eyebrows and her half-smile’s more a flash of teeth than something stilted and crafted.

Gabe can’t get over how beautiful she looks, even in a shitty picture like that.

In an automatism, he slides over to the chat, puts his coffee down on the seat next to him, holds his phone with both hands, keyboard covering half of the screen and gets to typing. Gabe hesitates before pressing send. _« Would’ve had a reason to if you were here, »_ was the first thing his mind came up with, but it somehow sounds like he’s expecting too much from her. He doesn’t want to look _desperate._

Hold backspace.  

 _« Would’ve but the cab smelled kinda funny, »_ Gabriel ends up typing, because he doesn’t want to add more attention to his self-esteem issues than he needs to. Especially when it comes to Amélie. He pays her money to come masturbate on his bed for fuck’s sake, all because somewhere in those twenty-five years of soldiering he cracked and forgot how to _interact_ normally with other people.

Figuring Amélie wouldn’t be able to reply soon, Gabe slips his phone into the pouch of his hoodie and takes his tablet out of the bookbag.

Three teens chatter loudly about the adventures they had on their backpacking trip, heavy rucksacks slumped against the USB charging terminal, smartphones in hand, the youngest guy sporting noticeable tan lines on his face. Gabe watches them from his peripheral while his newspaper loads. There’s another article about Lancaster on the front page.

 _Wait_ , Gabe thinks as he squints to take a better look at the picture that takes up a quarter of the entire webpage, _isn’t that the waiter from the Pine & Crane? _

He – _Lúcio_ _or something, right?_ – certainly stands out amongst the throng of black-robed lawyers, looking the part of a young, twenty-first century freedom fighter with his waist-length dreadlocks and colorful, slightly worn clothes. Lancaster’s renovation project never really interested Gabe. He knows how the story goes anyway, since one of his cousins lived through a similar situation.

Rich corporation strikes a deal with the local government to renovate a neighborhood so the suburb gets more attractive, buys up property rights and promises to resettle or compensate the people already there; and if they want their homes back, they’ll have to cough up thousands of dollars extra. Well _shit_ , yeah, tough luck but that’s life for you. Shouldn’t have left in the first place.

By the time Gabe’s finished with the sports’ section, a couple of stewardesses are busy setting up at the desk in front of the gate. Some passengers are already getting up to queue.

It’s pretty much routine to him by now, and the thought that once he sits his ass down again it’ll be out of his hands anyway, makes him stow his tablet back in the bookbag with a lighter chest. Gabe gets up from his seat and slings his bookbag over one shoulder. The three teens watch somewhat disinterestedly how the queue for the front desk becomes longer; the guy with the tan lines squats down to rummage in his backpack for something.

Gabe looks away and gets his boarding pass ready.

The four-hour flight passes by smoothly, there’s no turbulence and he manages to proofread and edit an article for the Middle East Institute Jack’s been working on. The woman next to him loudly opens a bag of Lays. Pinching the bridge of his nose, Gabe blinks the tiredness from his eyes and saves his progress on his tablet. Over a crackling speaker system, the pilot reminds them to watch the seatbelt sign. They’ll be landing in half an hour.

Transfers in Detroit Metro always leave a bad taste in Gabe’s mouth. It’s too _fucking rushed_ for starters, and the airport makes him feel cramped, like he’s _already_ stuck in a mob of people and then it seems like the walls are coming at him from all sides too. Gabe has a direct flight from Detroit to Milwaukee and spends the next hour and a half taking a catnap on the plane.

He’s learned how to sleep in warzones, so the buzz of the plane engines doesn’t faze him in the least.

When Gabriel walks through the gates to the arrival section – bookbag slung over one shoulder, one hand on the handle of his suitcase, fingers itching for a _fucking_ cigarette – he has half a mind to turn back around.

Holding a cardboard sign with the sentence ‘ _waiting for the king_ ’ scribbled in capital letters, Ana and Jack are standing right in front of the gate, grinning ear to ear like the crazy old bastards they are. Ana’s also wearing a Burger King crown on top of her headscarf.

Gabe makes a show of rolling his eyes when he’s close enough and mutters, “How many mimosas did you fuckers drink before you came up with this bright idea?”

“It’s nice to see you too Gabriel,” Ana replies with a sugary-sweet smile, taking the fake crown off her head and thrusting it against his chest.

With a huff, he takes the crown and puts it on top of his head, askew. Jack barks out a laugh and shakes his hand, saying, “It’s been too long, Gabe.”

“Since you got out of one of your stuffy suits, you mean,” Gabriel responds easily, seizing up his friend’s casual attire, and grins when Morrison self-consciously tugs at the collar of the polo shirt under his worn leather jacket. 

“Jack doesn’t want the new bloods to realize he’s just a grumpy old man,” Ana interjects, playfully jabbing Morrison with her elbow. He makes a face.

They start walking towards the exit after putting the sign next to a trash bin; Gabe earns himself a few weird glances with that ridiculous crown, but he sets his shoulders as if he was marching towards the front lines and ignores them.

Jack and Gabe drag their suitcases behind them, the wheels slightly scratching over the concrete in the parking lot. There’s a lot of back and forth. Morrison has a conference in the Hyatt Regency tomorrow afternoon – _expenses paid and everything, the lucky bastard_ – and landed two hours and a half before Gabe did. Ana’s going to drop him off before they drive on to her house in Freeport.

“—and I _swear to God_ if Portero’s gonna hassle me again, I’m gonna bag ‘em,” Morrison grumbles while Ana opens the trunk of her car.

Wisconsin gets way too chilly late fall and Gabe rubs his cold hands together, looking around the parking lot. It’s already dark out, but the garage’s well-lit with bars upon bars of fluorescent lights. Ana asks Jack to snap her a pic when he scraps with Portero over another one of his flimsy excuses. _Nothing livens up an academic debate like a fistfight_ , she teases while Jack loads his suitcase into the trunk.

“Hey _uh_ ,” Morrison suddenly begins, putting a hand on Gabe’s shoulder. “There’s more intel about that leak.”

From up close, the scars on Jack’s face are way more imposing than the ones on his; one long, thin pink line running from his forehead to below his cheekbone, and another shorter, thicker one cutting through his lips to his chin. Run-in with a nail bomb near Kabul’s embassy district. Morrison never really wanted to talk about it, but Gabe’s seen enough to imagine what a fucked-up mess the aftermath must’ve been.

Gabe takes his pack of smokes from his pocket and puts a cigarette between his teeth, hissing, “What ‘bout it?”

“Guess where the hackers are from,” Ana says, leaning against the back of her car with her arms crossed, head slightly tilted back. “I had my money on Russia.”

He steadies the fake crown on top of his head and brings the lighter to his mouth, shielding the flame from the draft with one hand. After blowing out a wisp of smoke, Gabe cocks his head and guesses, “China?”

“And is it confirmed it’s a collective?” He asks, turning to Jack.

Morrison shakes his head and answers, “Not even close. Mexico. We’re not sure if we’re dealing with a collective, but Liao and his team are working hard to track ‘em down as we speak.” Here he chuckles roughly. “Pisses him off that he hasn’t gotten his hands on the bastards yet.”

“Mexico?” Gabe says surprised, holding his cigarette between thumb and index an inch from his lips. “Well _shit_ , that’s unexpected.”

He takes another drag and mutters, “Guess there isn’t more to say aside from…” a pause for dramatic effect. “I’m riding shotgun.”

“You son of a—” Morrison doesn’t get to finish his sentence when Ana breaks out laughing and he pinches the bridge of his nose. “Go fuck yourself, Gabe,” he mutters, even if there isn’t much bite to it and Gabe’s one hundred percent sure he’s fighting back a grin.

Gabe smirks triumphantly, picks up his suitcase with one hand and puts it flat in the trunk, next to Jack’s. Looking over his shoulder, he states smugly, “I got someone to do that for me, anyway.”

Judging by the look on Morrison’s face and the sound Ana made when he said that, Gabe quickly concludes that he made a tactical error ever opening his mouth about that subject. Yanking the Burger King crown off his head and throwing into the trunk, he takes a steadying breath and whips around. What are the odds they think he was just joking?

“What are you fuckers smiling for?” He asks bluntly, crossing his arms over his chest and tapping his jittery fingers against his upper arms, chewing on the filter of his cigarette.

“Nothing, nothing. You just look… Healthier. Happier even, Gabriel,” Ana remarks. She makes a dismissive gesture with her hand, but her expression’s provocative, a crooked smile playing along her mouth like she’s way too pleased with herself for some reason.

“So, _uhm_ , you’re seein’ someone, Gabe?” Jack asks, sounding a tad too nonchalant to be genuine, hands in the pockets of his leather jacket. “You forgot to mention it in our last conversation.”

He drops his cigarette and snubs it out with the heel of his sneaker, smearing the ash all over the concrete underground.

“It’s…” Gabriel hesitates, because _complicated_ doesn’t really cover the situation he’s in. It’s not even a situation. He just ran his mouth off while he shouldn’t have. “A joke, okay?”

Ana shares a look with Jack and carefully touches her fingers to Gabe’s elbow, tilting her head to glance at his face. Her expression softens and combined with her grey hair peaking from underneath the blue headscarf, she has something motherly about her. He sighs and directs his gaze somewhere else, at a concrete pillar near the end of the parking lot.

“What happened to you, Gabriel?” She asks, gripping the sleeve of his coat tightly, to drag his attention back on her.

He can feel Morrison’s eyes on the back of his neck like a palpable weight. _Way to spoil the mood,_ Gabe berates himself, stuffing both of his hands in his pockets because they’ve started to shake lightly, _now they’re all worried and shit._

“If you don’t want to talk about—”

Gabe interrupts Jack before he can finish that sentence. Months ago, he would’ve jumped at the opportunity to drop the subject and allow his worries to tie knots into his stomach, handle things poorly but handle them by _himself_ , at least _._ He’s not about that life anymore.

“I hired an escort a couple of times, okay?” Gabe says and it sounds more like a confession, something that fits inside the nearly-empty concrete parking lot. “Her name’s Amélie and she’s… _fuck_ , she’s beautiful and kind and I don’t fucking know what the fuck I’m going to do if I develop _feelings_ for her.”

“Deal with ‘em,” Jack answers bluntly, hauling a hand through his shock of white hair. “You went through a real rough patch, Reyes.”

“I know, _Morrison_ ,” Gabe grits out in response, balling his hands to fists in his pockets.

Shooting him a half-hearted glare, Jack continues, “Look, from my point of view, this can go two ways. Either you break things off or you take it how it comes. You get feelings, act on ‘em. It doesn’t work out? It doesn’t. There isn’t much of a strategy to things like this anyway.”

“ _Aw_ Jack,” Ana starts, leaning her cheek against Gabe’s arm and reaching out to tug on the sleeve of Jack’s leather jacket. “This kind of speech is exactly one of the reasons why you got promoted to vice-director.”

Morrison rolls his eyes, a tad flustered, and grumbles under his breath, “Well fuck me if I didn’t win the lottery with the job.”

“ _Saps_ , the both of you,” Gabe accuses, grinning more with his eyes than with his mouth, and pats Ana on top of her head so she lets go of him.

His mouth thins into a straight line when he realizes that he still has to text Amélie. In the distance, an engine comes to life in a series of low rumbles and the twin beams of headlights cross between the parking spaces, reflecting off one of the pillars. A big, silver-grey SUV pulls out of the parking space and thunders past them; there’s a bunch of stickers around the license plate. _If God is for us, who can be against us?_  

Gabe nervously rubs the button of his nose and motions towards the car, muttering “I’m dead on my feet. Come on, let’s go. Before I crush Jackie here in a bear hug or something.”

“Were we having a moment?” Morrison asks, a note of feigned incredulity on the word _moment_ , but the gleam in his eyes reminds Gabe of when they just met, when Jack was just this farm kid from the Midwest who cracked way too many jokes out of nervousness and embarrassment.

He snorts and replies, “We already had too many of those, Morrison.”

Ana shakes her head at their antics and reaches up on the tips of her toes to close the trunk of her car. When she locks the trunk, the taillights flare red. Gabe gets into the passenger’s seat, grabs his phone and switches his mobile data on, and when he sees that Amélie hasn’t responded to him yet, he tries not to think too much about it. He sends her a quick text, saying that his flight was okay and that he landed safely.

While Gabe’s typing the message, Ana starts up her car and pulls out of the parking space. Music tunes out the companionable silence that had fallen over them.

“Could you turn up the sound?” Jack asks, leaning forwards so he fills a bit of the space between the two front seats, the seatbelt straining against his shoulder and broad chest. “Can’t hear a thing back here.”

After giving him a nonplussed look through the rearview mirror, Ana turns up the volume and comments, “You should get your ears checked out then. _Again._ ”

Gabe looks up from the screen of his phone, scrunches his brows together and says, “Is this Superstition?”

“Sounds like it,” Jack answers with a grin, backing away from the driver’s seat and leaning into the cushion of the backseat. Nodding his head to the beat, his eyes stray to the inside of the parking lot rolling by.

Soon enough they’re out on the road. Past the white-painted concrete wall on their left, lake Michigan stretches beyond the state borders, and Gabe realizes he’s never seen the water under the night sky before, only during daylight. They continue chatting during the 20-minute drive to the Hyatt. There’s too much to say and they’re still taking jabs at each other by the time Jack’s outside on the curb with his suitcase.

“So,” Ana begins innocently when they’re back in the car, hands flat on the wheel, gaze focused on the rearview mirror.

Gabe crosses his arms and keeps an eye on the street too, muttering, “Just spit it out.”

He leans the back of his head against the headrest of the passenger’s seat and takes a deep breath. It’s not… easy to talk about his feelings. And they’re going to talk about his feelings, he knows that as certainly as he knows he needs air to breathe. As a defense mechanism, Gabe used to spurn any efforts to discuss his PTSD in the past, shrugging everything off with a sarcastic remark or an offhanded dismissal. He folds his hands in his lap and tilts his head towards the small blue screen of the radio.

“You’ve had girlfriends before. Why hire an escort?” She asks bluntly, shifting into second when they’re on the street. They still have a two-hour drive ahead of them.

 “I had fuckbuddies, Ana.” _There_ , he said it. “I didn’t have a connection with them or anything and I got tired of them pretty fucking easily. And then,” his voice hitches, and he swallows away a lump down his throat. “And then the episodes got worse and I just shut myself off, from everyone.”

“Doesn’t really answer my question though, Gabriel.” She remarks gently, in the same tone of voice she’d use on Fareeha whenever she wanted a snack before going to bed, and takes a turn left.

His fingernails make an almost inaudible _skrrt_ -ing sound when he drags them over the material of his seatbelt. Gabe responds, “I thought, _shit_ , okay, this is gonna sound stupid but I thought it was going to ease me back into the dating scene. Like some step by step course of how to deal with people in the bedroom.”

Ana merges onto the nearly-deserted East-West Freeway, saying, “You were lonely, weren’t you?”

“Yeah,” he admits, uneasily touching his fingertips over the seatbelt that’s crossed over his chest. “Those sessions with my new therapist just made me realize that I have to move on with my life and not, you know, _half-ass_ it…” He huffs and scratches the shaven side of his head, mumbling, “And then I found this site and I met Amélie and…”

Gabe heaves a heavy sigh. “Some _fucking_ bed I made.”

“You can still choose if you’re going to lie in it or not,” she comments calmly, shifting gears again. “You can stop sleeping with her—”

“I haven’t _fucked_ her, Ana.”

Ana cocks her head to the right and looks at him with sharp eyes, bright in the flash of streetlight falling into the car, sudden like a lightning’s strike.

She responds without skipping a beat, every inch the instructor on the shooting range, “Stop _meeting_ with her then, and find someone the old-fashioned way. Or you can talk to her, see if she’s interested in you and not just your money. But use your head, Gabriel, she’s in the business for a reason and getting her out of it might be something you don’t want to sign up for.”

Rubbing the furrow between his brows, Gabe mutters, “We’re not _there_ yet, Ana. Who the fuck knows how this is going to end up?”

Looking back at the road ahead, Ana reaches out and pats him on the leg. They’re nearing the exit for the I-43 and from then on, it’ll still be over an hour and forty minutes when they reach Ana’s home. He holds and squeezes the hand she offers in comfort for a short moment.

“I’ve got your back,” she says, putting her hand back on the gear stick, and that’s all Gabe needs to hear really.

“No matter what… Jack does too, and the others too of course…” Her mouth curves into a smile when she chides humorously, “You just didn’t want to see it.”

Gabe scoffs half-heartedly and turns his head away from her, watching the flashes of white concrete wall zip by at 115 miles an hour. He rubs his hands together, itching for a smoke that’s long overdue. Exhausted from his trip, he tries to stifle a yawn by gritting his teeth together tightly, feeling the shaky sensation twitch along his nose and inside his chest.

“I _saw it_ ,” Gabe whispers hotly over the white noise of the broadcaster’s voice, crossing his arms and hiding his shaking hands between his biceps and armpit. “I just… As squad leader and all that stuff, I thought I should’ve been able to handle shit on my own—” If he was weak, then who would be the one that everyone else fell back on?

Before Ana could get another word in, Gabe finishes the conversation tiredly, “Can we _just_ drop it for tonight? First evening of my trip and we’re already up over our heads in my drama.”

“Of course,” Ana answers kindly, unapologetic, glancing at him from her peripheral only to discover he’s still pointedly looking outside. She hums lowly, patting the steering wheel with both hands, and then starts to talk about Fareeha’s promotion.

They spend the remainder of the drive switching back and forth between companionable silences and light-hearted chatter.

Keeping himself from dozing off, Gabe focuses on the cadence of Ana’s voice, on the radio playing on in the background – music interspersed with adverts and announcements – and on the bits of scenery he can see. He pulls his phone out of his pocket. The brightness of the screen pricks at his tired eyes and Gabe squints, bleary-eyed, sliding through the notifications with the plush pad of his thumb. Ana asks if he saw the latest pic Reinhardt posted.

“He’s gone mountain climbing in the Swiss Alps,” she tells him conversationally.

Gabriel nods curtly in return, a low rumble of a hum echoing in the back of his throat, ignoring the drop of disappointment when he sees Amélie hasn’t replied to his message yet. _Fuck_ , he thinks, scratching the back of his left hand nervously, _I really need a cigarette._ They’re driving down the I-90 now. Another half an hour cooped up in the car and they’re arriving at Ana’s place, in a calm, little neighborhood near Rockford University’s main campus.

When Gabe finally gets out of the car, he triumphantly stretches his body, muscles drawn taut, arms up high over his head, eyes closed, a satisfied _ah_ falling from his open mouth.

Ana slings his bookbag over her shoulder. Gabe lights a cigarette and smoking contently, he gets his suitcase out of the trunk and follows Ana down the stone pathway to the front door. Her home’s a regular two-bedroom house, with a small entryway, a living room, a bathroom, a kitchen and a garage. He wonders if she still grows herbs on the window panes; Ana always used to make mint tea from her own homegrown mint.

After a late dinner consisting out of some leftover risotto and an omelet, Gabe finds himself alone in the guestroom. It used to be Fareeha’s bedroom, but after she moved out, Ana sold most of the furniture and installed a settee.

He settles down on the sofa and shifts through the clothes in his suitcase. Before Ana retired to her room, she told him it was okay to take a shower if he wanted to, he knew his way around the house by now so she didn’t bother showing him where everything was. It was easy to see the long drive took a lot out of her and she needed to rest up. Fareeha would surely stop by to see him tomorrow. His gaze catches on a flash of red between his underwear and he pulls the tie Amélie used as a gag last night from between a pair of folded boxer-briefs and a shirt by its tail-end.

Without really thinking about it, Gabe throws the tie onto the pillows and grabs a pair of slightly-too-big boxer-shorts and a white wife-beater to sleep in.

His toothbrush too, and a small, plastic travel bag with his shower gel and shampoo. Gabe’s not _vain_ , but he doesn’t want to smell like flowers or peaches or whatever.

Back in the guestroom after a much-deserved hot shower, he prepares for bed by zipping up his suitcase and putting it in a corner. With the lights turned off, it’s pitch dark inside. By day, his view from the window is the backyard, the rickety toolshed and the hedge walling them off from the neighbors’ backyards.

Gabe uses the light from his phone to maneuver around.

Propped up against the backrest of the couch, legs stretched out in front of him, Gabe checks his social media one more time before going to sleep, fumbling with the tie on his lap, rubbing the smooth fabric between thumb and forefinger. That email from earlier this morning was just an update by the logistics team in Iraq. He’s yawning unabashedly in the darkness of the guestroom when his phone buzzes in his hand.

 _She sent me another pic_? Gabe’s somewhat surprised, since he hadn’t really been expecting a reply anymore, let alone a snap.  

He feels his mouth going dry, suddenly parched for a strong drink after he’s opened the snap and tries to process what he’s looking at. Amélie’s as good as topless, wearing her blouse open. She must’ve taken the selfie straight after her shower judging by how the long, wet strands of her hair are sticking to her shoulders and breasts. Her bare skin’s gleaming under the warm bedroom lights.

Amélie’s expression is somewhat mischievous, whatnot with her lower lip drawn into her mouth. There’s a thin, black bar stretched over her tits and sternum.

_« Have a good night’s rest after your flight, Gabriel. Speak to you soon? »_

Gabe clenches the red tie in a shaking fist, breathing heavily through his nose. _Hold to watch again._ He pushes down on Amélie’s snap to load again. Two times eight seconds isn’t nearly enough to commit the selfie to memory.

His first thought is to call her up, – the desire to hear her voice so overwhelming his chest’s ready to combust – his second thought is to snap her something equally provocative back. _Maybe the tie around his cock like a ribbon?_ But then Amélie would _know_ that he took the tie with him and that might implicate more than he’s willing to share.

 _Should he be sexting with her right now? In Ana’s house?_ His third idea is so much simpler: just give her what she wanted earlier today.

He throws the covers off his legs and gets up, stumbling about in the dark towards the light switch next to the door. After his eyes have adjusted to the lights, Gabe walks over to his suitcase, puts it down on the floor and zips it open, looking for a shirt that would cover the scar on his collarbone and shoulder. Once he’s found an angle that makes him look _not terrible_ , he grins at his reflection on the screen and takes the pic.

« Gonna have some pretty sweet dreams thanks to you now. » He types as a caption and presses send before he can change his mind.

Gabe wets his lips nervously, squeezing the tie like a lifeline when he sees that blue circle blink on the bottom of the screen. What a sorry sight he must be, sitting all alone in the middle of the settee, eyes glued to the bright screen of his phone, waiting for a reply that could make or break his night.

« You should definitely send me more snaps like this one, Gabriel. » She sent as a reply.

Now how could Gabe say no to that, to Amélie? _God,_ he thinks, smiling like he’s doped up on morphine as he types up his next message, _wish I could have her with me tonight and wake up next to her in the morning_. And before he fully realizes the implication of that thought, she sends him another text to wish him goodnight. Gabe blinks owlishly and slowly shakes his head, he’s _way_ too tired to think clearly right now.

.


	8. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He glances at the open doorway before opening the snap, more out of habit than any actual concern that Amélie sent him something raunchy or that Ana might walk into the guestroom. The sound of the doorbell echoes onwards faintly from downstairs. Gabe faintly registers the noise, standing slightly hunched in front of the settee, eyes glued to the screen of his phone, sunlight fanning out around the outline of his body as if it’s desperately grasping for something.
> 
> Fuck, the curse escapes him in an exhale and becomes something tangible in the quiet of the room, you’re just too much, Amélie.
> 
> Even in just a simple sport shirt, Amélie manages to look effortlessly beautiful. Her hair is pulled up in a high ponytail – to keep it out of her neck during running, no doubt – but cascades over her shoulder as she tilts her head cheekily, flashing him a playful smirk. What really catches his attention however, is the look in her eyes.
> 
> It’s like an interlude to Amélie skimming her tongue over her lower lip and putting a hand on his chest, grabbing a hold of his shirt before pulling him close, closer still, until their mouths are but a breath’s space apart.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was actually hoping to get Gabe's trip out of the way in this chapter, but I just... kept on writing? So have a 'day in the life of'-kind of thing. After this chapter, I intend to publish a two shorter ones, containing interactions I wanted to write in this one, but didn't have the space nor setting for. Hope you enjoy!

.

When Gabe groggily enters the kitchen, he lazily scratches his hairy abdomen with one hand, phone in the other, shirt bunched up around his waist, and yawns tiredly. The smell of fried eggs wafts over to welcome him from the frying pan on the stove.

Sunlight filters through the blinds of the large, rectangular window above the sink.

His gaze flicks from the picture of Fareeha pinned to the fridge by a giraffe-shaped magnet to Ana, leaning against the counter and smirking at him with a mug of tea in hand. The yellow label of the teabag bounces around as she shifts her weight around.

“Good morning,” Ana greets before bringing the brim of her mug to her mouth and taking a slow sip.

He grunts in return and stifles another, smaller yawn against the back of his hand, peering bleary-eyed at the radio in the corner of the room. It’s a Goodmans with wooden finish, made to look like it’s from some fifties household magazine. Gabe vaguely remembers it was Reinhardt who came up with the idea to buy it for Ana’s fifty-fifth birthday when they were having lunch at the Chick-fill-A on the other side of Route 267.

Womack and Womack’s Teardrops is playing softly, and it sounds as if the voices are whispered from high up the corners of the kitchen and bear down on them in a haunt. They barely reach above the loud crackling of the eggs in the frying pan.

“You want toast with your eggs?” Ana asks when he’s taken a seat, uncrossing her ankles and pushing herself off the counter.

Gabe hums lowly, propping his elbows on the table, and mutters in a voice hoarse from sleep, “Yeah sure.” Dropping his face in his hands and rubbing his forehead, he then peeks between his thick fingers and prompts, “Hey, you got any coffee?”

“I’ll make you some. Oh, you look so tired still,” Ana comments breezily with a smirk, grabbing a coaster from a drawer and putting the frying pan on the table. “Even after… How many hours of sleep?”

With the smell this close-by, his stomach grumbles loudly and his mouth almost starts to water. Not bothering to refute her comment, Gabe scoots backwards so she can put a plate down in front of him. He managed to sleep off the exhaustion of his trip, but it’s not like he feels particularly well-rested, and maybe the vivid dreams he had about Amélie are to blame.

Around five thirty, Gabe woke up half-hard and frustrated. It took him twenty minutes to shake off the dirty thoughts on his mind, and another ten to fifteen to fall back asleep.

“Cut me some slack,” he says, pressing his cheek to his knuckles as he watches Ana toast some slices of white bread. He reaches for the spatula and slowly shovels some eggs onto his plate.

There’s all sorts of spreads on the table: a glass jar of jam, a pack of sliced cheddar, Nutella and marmalade and more. Some of them haven’t even been opened yet, straight from the store to the table.

The ‘ _ping’_ of the toaster resounds through the kitchen. Ana puts the slices of toast on a plate and puts it onto the table, next to his own. She looks at the tight-fitting shirt he’s wearing and narrows her eyes, murmuring, “ _Huh_ , I thought you didn’t have to wear shirts like these for your scar anymore.”

He flusters a bit and mumbles with his mouth full, “ _Technically_ , I don’t…”

“Technically?” Ana prompts aloud, tone of voice too high, too innocent. She’s never been the type of person to take anyone’s word at face value. “I can think of a reason why you would though. I hope she sent you a nice picture back…” Trailing off with a smug smirk on her face, Ana leaves him to stew in his chair while she walks over to the Nespresso machine on the counter.

Gabe swallows loudly, gathers his wits and replies with a lopsided grin, “No nudes were sent under this roof, Ana. Don’t you worry.”

“Don’t go around saying things if you don’t know they’re true for certain, Gabriel.” Comes her quick reply. She puts a mug on the tray, pops one of the capsules into the machine and pushes the right buttons. The machine whirrs into action and pours two streams of coffee into the cup, while a hiss of steam comes from the back.

Grimacing, Gabe says, “I really don’t want to think about your Skype sessions with Reinhardt this early in the morning.”

“It’s ten thirty,” Ana deadpans, grabbing the mug from the machine and putting it down on the table. “Speaking of the time, Fareeha texted me to say that she’s coming over in an hour. So, put on some clothes when you’re done eating, Gabriel.”

While he snaps a pic of his breakfast and adds both Jack and Amélie as receivers, Gabe answers jokingly, “Yeah, yeah. Just lemme enjoy my kingly meal.”

He types _« Better than the Hyatt’s»_ as a caption and hits send, ignoring the nonplussed look Ana’s giving him. After he’s put his phone down, he lathers some strawberry jam on a slice of toast and takes a large bite. It doesn’t take long for someone to text him back. Ana puts her empty plate in the sink and takes her mug from the counter, drinking the remainder of her tea with a deep furrow wedged between her brows; the drink must’ve gone cold in the meantime.

Jack answered first, quickly, sending him a snap of the breakfast buffet at the hotel.

“Son of a bitch,” Gabe whispers as he sees Berkeley professor Akande Ogundimu loading a _shit-ton_ of breakfast sausages onto his plate, and his squad’s former combat medic, Angela Ziegler, grabbing a croissant from a basket next to him on the long table. The caption on the snap reads _« You sure? »._

Peeking over his shoulder, Ana catches the last few seconds of the snap and breaks down in a wide grin. “I hope Angela has some time to come over this weekend too. It’s been too long since we last talked.”

“Oh _haha_ , I didn’t know Akande and doc Ziegler were coming too. Way to leave me in the dark, Morrison,” he mutters lowly, more to himself than to Ana, and holds down on the screen to take a selfie. Gabe angles his phone so Ana’s in view too and beckons her to come closer. “Com’on, look like I’m being delightful company.”

“Are you insinuating you’re otherwise not, Gabriel?” She laughs when she sees him scowl on screen.  Nevertheless, she puts a hand on his shoulders, leans in and smiles for the camera.

He adds Angela and Akande as receivers too, types up the caption « Et tu, Brute? » with a couple of knife and snake emojis, and hits send. Ana pats him on the shoulder a couple of times.

In the reflection of his blank phone screen, he can see the indulging smile curled along Ana’s lips. _Pssh as if she wouldn’t do the exact same fucking thing._  

Gabe and doc Ziegler go way back: she was a combat-medic assigned to his squad during the mission along the Afghan-Pakistani border. Same age as Jesse, and the same hotheadedness in a way as well, putting herself out there to save men others would’ve marked for dead. Patched up him up after the car bomb too. She went back to college after five years on duty and earned quite a name for herself in the field of prosthetics.

Soon enough his phone’s buzzing again, and he wonders which one of the three answered back first. Gabe rules out Akande though.

Knowing the guy, he’s already stirring up a debate between two other attendees, adding fuel to the fire over a plate of sausages and hash browns. Even if Akande’s rather confrontational, Gabriel gets along with him just fine. They talk a lot about politics and military theory, to the point Akande even asked him to write the introductory note to his second book on urban warfare in Afghanistan. Sipping from his coffee, Gabe checks his snapchat.

Morrison sent him a pic of his unimpressed face, with the words « Thumbs down, you son of a bitch » and an _actual_ honest-to-god thumbs down emoji across his throat.

Not knowing what to respond to that other than a bunch of crying-laughing emojis, Gabe scoops some more egg onto his fork and takes a huge bite. He absentmindedly watches Ana put away some things into the refrigerator. When his phone goes off again, he fully expects a text message from Angela or another snap from Jack, but for all he knows one of his family members could’ve updated their facebook status and tagged him in it.

In hindsight, Gabe shouldn’t have been surprised Amélie sent him a snap too.

“Did someone send you something funny?” Ana asks as she grabs the marmalade, regarding him with an arched eyebrow and some stray gray hairs slipping free from her braid, sliding past her ear and peeking from underneath her headscarf.

Confused, he looks up from his phone.

She rolls her eyes in a way that reminds Gabe of his mother when she told him for the third time in a short time that he wasn’t allowed to run around with his dirty shoes on indoors. “No, I didn’t get anything funny, _the fuck_. Why would you say something like that?”

“You were grinning like an idiot. That’s why,” Ana replies without missing a beat.

_“Oh.”_ Gabe responds eloquently and nervously starts to scratch his jaw, ignoring the two-day old stubble growing there. He didn’t even realize he was grinning. Amélie had sent him a picture of just her kitchen table, with its bouquet of pink-tinged violets in a glass vase, a plate with a cut-open croissant and a slice of cheese, and the caption _« I’m afraid mine couldn’t compete »._

He slides over to the chat and asks her about her day, ignoring the twinge in his stomach by shoving another bite of toast down his throat.

After finishing his breakfast, Gabe stands up to help Ana. They clean up the table and empty the dishwasher, load the used plates, cups and cutlery into the dishwasher again and wash the mint leaves for the iced tea Ana’s going to make for when Fareeha comes over. While Ana continues with the tea, Gabe returns to the guestroom to change. He tugs the tight undershirt up and over his head; even if his reflection in the window blends in somewhat with the scenery outside, it seems to be staring right back at him.

Aside from the thick scar on his shoulder and the one from a gunshot wound a fair couple of inches above his right hipbone, he doesn’t look so shabby – _at least_ , Gabriel doesn’t believe so.

When he’s one foot down the leg of his favorite pair of sweatpants, his phone goes off buzzing from where he left it somewhere on the settee. Gabe thinks it’s silly how he experiences that flutter of anticipation in his chest. Hoping beyond hope like some dumb high school kid that it’s Amélie who replied to talk about her day and to ask after his. He pulls the thick elastic band over his ass and adjusts the pockets that were drooping out, searches for his phone and unlocks the screen.

« Business as usual ». Treacherous as his mind is, Gabe immediately reads this as: _I’m meeting up with a client today_ , and the inside of his mouth feels dry, and raspy like sandpaper, like he swallowed something _foul._

She sent him four messages in a row. « I’m going out for a run in a few minutes. And take a nice long bath afterwards /smiley face/ What about you? »

« Remember when I talked about my colleague’s kid Fareeha? » _Probably not,_ Gabe thinks but hits send regardless, and to specify he types up another message. « The one I played guitar for / Gonna have a little reunion soon ». Holding his phone in a sweaty fist, he one-handedly rummages through his suitcase for a hoodie to wear. The floor’s kind of cold under his bare feet.

Another couple of messages from Amélie then, coming in quick succession: « Have a lot of fun /smiley face/ I’ll be heading out now ».

« Is it okay if I keep sending you things over snapchat? » Amélie asks him too, and before Gabe has the chance to reply, she hits him with something that makes that overwhelming urge to call her up return in full force.

_« I just like talking to you Gabriel »._

Breath rushes out through his nostrils. He can see the blue circle lighting up in the corner, signaling that she’s about to send him something new. _Don’t you fucking dare apologize for telling me this Amélie_ , he curses under his breath.

« I understand if you’re busy, » she texts him instead.

Gabe puts on his hoodie lightning quick, scrambling to put his head through and get his hands out of the sleeves. Presses on the blank circle down the page and focuses the camera on him.

_How many fucking options are there?_ – he wonders disbelievingly when he scrolls through the collection of snapchat filters.

With a stutter in his chest, Gabe settles for the flower crown one and puts on his biggest grin. His face looks sort of weird, overexposed and silver-eyed, off-set by the white fake flower crown projected over his forehead, but if he can _just_ make her smile, he’d take a hundred more of these silly pics. He presses down on the screen and adds the caption: « Talk to me whenever you want ».

It doesn’t take long before Gabriel gets a reply.

He glances at the open doorway before opening the snap, more out of habit than any actual concern that Amélie sent him something raunchy or that Ana might walk into the guestroom. The sound of the doorbell echoes onwards faintly from downstairs. Gabe faintly registers the noise, standing slightly hunched in front of the settee, eyes glued to the screen of his phone, sunlight fanning out around the outline of his body as if it’s desperately grasping for something.

_Fuck_ , the curse escapes him in an exhale and becomes something tangible in the quiet of the room, _you’re just too much, Amélie._

Even in just a simple sport shirt, Amélie manages to look effortlessly beautiful. Her hair is pulled up in a high ponytail – to keep it out of her neck during running, no doubt – but cascades over her shoulder as she tilts her head cheekily, flashing him a playful smirk. What really catches his attention however, is the look in her eyes.

It’s like an interlude to Amélie skimming her tongue over her lower lip and putting a hand on his chest, grabbing a hold of his shirt before pulling him close, closer still, until their mouths are but a breath’s space apart.

It’s enough to make a tremor slide over the back of his hands and he draws a deep enough breath to knock a house down upon exhale.

“Gabriel?” He can hear Fareeha’s voice calling him from downstairs.

Pocketing his phone in the pouch of his hoodie, Gabe yells out that he’s coming on down and quickly tugs on a pair of socks. His heavy footfalls are muffled on the floorboards when he exits the guestroom and if he isn’t careful he might slip on the smooth wooden steps when he trudges down the stairs. Ana and Fareeha both are waiting for him in the entry hall.

_Why is it every time I see you, I feel old as fuck?_ – is the first thing that leaves his mouth when he sees Fareeha standing there, casually leaning against the wall with her arms crossed over her chest, with her leather jacket still on.

Fareeha cocks her head and gives him that grin she always give him – and he remembers what it looked like when she was five with a gap between teeth, remembers it just as clearly as when she was a teen and proudly showed off the piercing she got in her nose and got rid of not even a month later because it got infected.

 “If it’s any consolation, I’m getting older too Gabriel,” she says jokingly, pushing herself off the wall and walking over to him for a hug.

“Yeah, yeah, lifts my mood up like you wouldn’t believe it,” he responds sarcastically, wrapping his arms around her shoulders and hugging her close. “How’ you been? Kicked enough ass this week?”

She snorts at the statement, takes a step back, unzips and shrugs off her jacket before hanging it up on the coat rack next to the front door. Ana gives Gabe an amused look that says it all.

While they move over to the living room, Fareeha complains that, “I’m stuck at a desk lately. We made a few high-profile arrests and now I’m weeding out mistakes in the paperwork so the lawyers can’t take any advantage of them. I mean, it’s important obviously, _but it’s just so—_ ”

“Fucking boring?” Gabe prompts as he settles down on the two-seat sofa.

Ana laughs before ducking into the kitchen, to get the iced tea from the fridge, while Fareeha agrees with him, a hint of a smile playing along the corners of her mouth. She takes a seat on the lounge chair and perches her feet on the ottoman, propping one elbow on the arm rest. Music resounds softly from the open doorway to the kitchen, some mellow song from the late seventies, and Ana returns with the refreshments on a plastic tray. They fall into easy, light-hearted conversation, catching up on each other’s lives.

Gabe feels his phone buzz against his stomach through the thick fabric of his hoodie an hour in and sneaks it out of his pouch while Fareeha and Ana are discussing their plans for Thanksgiving.

_“Dad texted me this morning to say he booked his flight.”_ Gabe’s not really paying attention, listening with half an ear as the picture of the New Year’s party lights up on his screen. “ _He told me too,_ _ḥ_ _ab_ _ī_ _bti. It’ll be so nice to have the whole family together again.”_ When he sees the snap Amélie sent him, Gabe pulls the collar of his hoodie up ‘til his nose, to hide the involuntary grin that threatens to split his mouth apart.

She’s in the bathtub, but it’s not like he can see much of her body.

_“When’s Reinhardt arriving again?”_ The pic’s taken from her perspective, so he can see her long legs in the pinkish water. _“The 22d, he couldn’t book an earlier flight.”_ Amélie has one of those fancy tub caddies you can put stuff on during bath time, and it’s strategically placed over her lap. There’s a housekeeping book on hers, a simple ballpoint pen, and some beauty products, like body scrub and body lotion.

Her caption simply reads: « Multitasking! ».

“So… What are your plans for Thanksgiving, Gabriel?” Fareeha asks, turning towards him. He’s too engrossed with his phone to notice she’s asking him a question, replaying the snap and observing what he can see of Amélie’s bathroom. It has something homely about its interior, something distinctively foreign too. Fareeha shares a look with her mother and clinks her thumbnail against the glass. “Gabe?”

“ _Mmh?_ ” He makes a faint humming noise at the back of his throat, tearing his gaze away from his phone.

“Were we boring you, Gabriel?” Ana prompts with that godawful smile of hers, one leg neatly tucked under the other. She leans back a bit to chance a look at his phone. “Or did someone more _interesting_ catch your attention?”

“ _Play nice_ , you two,” Fareeha comments with an easy grin when he scoffs sourly and stuffs his phone back in the pouch of his hoodie. “I didn’t know you were seeing someone… You didn’t post anything on facebook.”

Gabe looks from Ana, who’s sitting right next to him on the couch, to Fareeha on the lounge chair and heaves a deep sigh. It would be weird to talk about Amélie that frankly, wouldn’t it? Her job’s skirting the line with illegality and _oh yeah,_ she’s only a year older than Fareeha, so that’s bound to earn him a weird look from the woman he’s known since infancy. He wets his lips awkwardly, ignoring how they feel like sandpaper.

Rubbing his hands together nervously, Gabe eventually says, “I’m not _dating_ her, there’s just a lot of, _uhm_ , you know, potential, I guess.”

Ana doesn’t give him away, watching him from her peripheral while she takes another sip of her iced tea; she probably understands why he doesn’t want to elaborate about Amélie’s situation. He slumps against the backrest of the couch, rubbing his right thumb over the back of his left hand over and over. Fareeha raises an eyebrow at him and puts her glass back on the coffee table.

“Well, maybe you should try and realize that potential,” she advises while her mother pours her another glass of iced tea. She nods at Ana in thanks before continuing, “You know what the coach from Friday Nights Lights would say. Clear eyes, full hearts, can’t lose.”

“I _fucking_ hated that show,” Gabe replies with a laugh. “But yeah, your mom told me pretty much the same. Minus the cheesy football quote, of course.”

They drop the subject, only to talk about Thanksgiving again. Gabe’s sister invited him to spend Thanksgiving in San Diego together with her family, and there’s a good chance his auntie from Tijuana is going to come over too. Fareeha’s staying over for dinner, so at around five, they move on to the kitchen. He’s stuck peeling the potatoes at the kitchen table, and when the two are busy at the kitchen counters, Gabe rubs his fingers clean with a rag and checks his snapchat. He’s felt his phone buzz in the pouch of his hoodie more than just a couple of times.

Jack sent him a string of messages about how much he hated the conference, how close he got to decking Portero in the face and how Angela had to step in at some point, just like he predicted yesterday.

Amélie sent him a couple of snaps and texts over the chat too. The first snap was a _fucking cockteaser_ , with her perched all seductively on her bathroom sink, wearing nothing but a pink floral kimono; her face was hidden behind her hand and phone in the mirror’s reflection. Gabe’s fingers spontaneously start _itching_ , just for a touch of her soft, wet skin.

What really gets to him however, even more so than the selfie are the short, simple messages about what she’s going to do around the house today and what’s on her mind; especially the ‘confession’ that he inspired her to buy flowers to liven up her place made his chest swell with pride.

_She must get pretty lonely sometimes,_ Gabe muses as he skims through her messages a second time, _guess that makes two of us_.

Before he gets a chance to reply, Ana asks him how far he’s coming along with those potatoes and he tells her that he’s almost done peeling them, just give him another two to five minutes. It’s become a tradition to make _sanyet el batates –_ Fareeha’s favorite dish – together when Gabe happens to stay over. Ana turns on the lights when the sun starts to set, and from where she’s standing at the sink, she has a beautiful view of sky changing colors at the faraway horizon, between the neighboring houses and trees.

Soon enough the smell of the chicken broth, potatoes, tomatoes, onions and spices wafts from inside the skillet over to where they’re talking and they move to the dining table in the living room.

At around nine thirty Gabe’s smoking a cigarette and enjoying the silence outside. It’s such a stark contrast with the rowdy reminiscing they did during dinner, talking about all the shit he and his squad pulled during the long stretches of time they didn’t see any action, and the meetings he and Ana were forced to endure when they both worked at the office in Virginia.

Gabriel can only take that much socializing in one day though and offered to see Fareeha out, trying not to give her the same empty promises of keeping in touch more. Like he usually did when they said goodbye.

She left about fifteen minutes ago, still having a two-hour drive ahead of her and work in the early morning.

Instead of going right back inside, he decided to linger outside for a bit and clear his mind. Gabe pulls his phone out of the pouch of his hoodie and scrolls down to the bottom of the chat with Amélie, figuring that Jack won’t mind his radio silence for a bit longer.

He takes another long drag of his cigarette before he starts to type up a reply: _« You really got my ego going by saying I inspired you like you don’t know how big of a compliment that is to me and it took everything not to start gloating about it »_. His text ends up being this huge run-on sentence and Gabe gets embarrassed when he reads over it again.

Dropping his cigarette to the ground, he whispers _fuck it_ and hits send anyway.

“Aren’t you coming back inside?” Ana startles him with the question, standing in the open doorway, one hand on the wooden frame. She has this amused look about her after catching him on his phone again, as if she knows exactly who he’s texting. “It’s getting rather cold, don’t you think?”

“Yeah, in a second…” Gabe replies softly, slipping his phone in the back pocket of his pants. He tugs self-consciously at his hoodie before saying, “Hey, _uhm…_ Thanks for not getting into details, y’know, about Amélie.”

Her smile’s soft and motherly and she leans her cheek against the doorframe, humming under her breath. “It’s hardly my place to discuss your love life—” and when Gabe’s about to interrupt her, she corrects herself seamlessly, “ _Oh_ , of course, I forgot about your self-denial for a moment, your _potential_ love life.” Before he can chew her out, Ana’s already flitted back into the entryway of the house, faster and nimbler than he expected.

Gabe groans loudly, pushes himself off the wall, walks inside and says to her, “You just offed me, Amari. Plunged the knife right in my back _._ ”

“Stop pretending I’m not right. One text message and you’re grinning like a lovesick puppy,” Ana teases back, collecting the dirty plates from the dinner table. She pauses what she’s doing for a moment to give him _a look_ and continues innocently, “Unless she sent you something else _after all._ ”

Trying to maintain his composure and hide the fact she _totally_ called him out, Gabe mutters dryly, “If you don’t need help cleaning up, I’m going to take a nice long shower now. I’ve got a class to teach in the morning.”

“Such a great idea. I always like getting selfies from Reinhardt after he’s taken a shower and I’m sure Amélie wouldn’t say no to any of yours either…” She chuckles when Gabe heaves a heavy sigh and starts to trudge up the steps of the stairs towards the bathroom. Unable to resist, Ana calls after him, “Remember Gabriel, your thighs are your best feature!”

As it turns out, those words seemed to _stick_ , because when he’s standing in front of the sink, staring at his reflection in the mirror, he’s seriously considering sending Amélie a selfie. _Hey,_ _she did it first, so why shouldn’t you return the favor, Reyes?_

He drapes the towel he used to dry his mop of curls with over his right shoulder to hide his scar, and tugs on his CK boxer briefs to show off more of his muscular thighs. _If Ana ever finds out_ , Gabe muses quietly as he searches for his phone, _she’s never going to let me live this one down._

His lips curve into a small, somewhat smug smirk once he’s back in front of the mirror, one hand holding onto the edge of the sink.

Thanks to the bright lights above the sink, his chest and abs are nicely highlighted, but then again, so is the thick white scar tissue above his right hipbone and the thinner scars running along his thighs. _Like Morrison would say: ‘don’t think, just act’,_ he reprimands himself and with those motivational thoughts in mind, Gabriel takes the pic.

Doesn’t bother to add a caption, since she didn’t bother with one either.

After he’s hit send, self-doubt – now she’s _really_ going to think you’re pathetic, _and_ aren’t you too old for this shit anyway? – claws at the back of his throat and he tries to scrub the taste off his tongue with mint toothpaste.

_It’s not like you had your dick out,_ his mind feebly reassures as he brushes his teeth, _just get a grip, jesus…_

Gabe starts to worry he’s going to leave his fingerprints on the sink at this rate, whatnot with how hard he’s holding onto it, looking like a real nutjob in the mirror; face all screwed up, toothbrush sticking out of his mouth and white foam dribbling down his chin. _Fuck._

Anxiety dictates his movements as he stalks bare-footed over the ice-cold guestroom floor, from one corner to another. He plugs his charger into the socket closest to the settee, rummages through the closet for a comforter and gets the prep he did for tomorrow’s class from his suitcase. Settling down on the settee, Gabe takes another look at his notes.

Somewhere outside, Ana’s neighbors are shouting at each other; bright, white light falls into the room from the window behind him – they must’ve put on the big porch light – and the ash tree in the backyard casts the shadow of its balding crown onto the blank walls, a tangle of branches and twigs.

His gaze flicks from the papers on his lap to a point somewhere past his drawn-up knees. _It was a fucking stupid idea_. The thought springs on him like a boobytrap, and Gabe draws a deep breath, already building up and breaking down every reason _why_ Amélie hasn’t replied yet.

It’s the lack of control over the situation that really _fucks_ Gabe over.

Slouching against the backrest of the sofa, Gabe relaxes his legs and stares at the wall— _notes discarded next to him, the urge to check his phone bubbling up his belly like stomach acid_ —drifting back to the couple of days he spent at Ana’s place during that exceptionally hot summer three years ago.

Ana’s neighbors have a fish pond in their back yard and a pond means mosquitoes, and mosquitoes mean sleepless nights if you have the misfortune of having two or three buzzing around your ears. He remembers lying awake, staring at the ceiling with tired, bloodshot eyes, too stubborn to go accompany Ana outside for a drink. He was a bigger mess back then, constantly thinking about either work or the war.

Doesn’t matter which war he was thinking about really; they were all roughly the same from his point of view.

Now Gabe’s sitting here, worrying about a woman and why she hasn’t texted him back yet. He absentmindedly scratches the back of his right hand until his skin starts to tingle slightly and then caves to the bundle of nerves in the pit of his belly, reaching for his phone. For some reason, his phone didn’t buzz when Jesse finally bothered to send him a text nor when Akande and Jack messaged him over snapchat.

The big red ‘2’ on the app’s icon got his heart jackhammering for a split-second, but when he saw who texted him, an uneasy mix of relief and disappointment washed over him. Silence isn’t a rejection.

Ana peeks her head inside the room to bid him goodnight. Her long, silver-gray hair’s tumbling down her shoulders in curls from being in a braid all day, and the porchlight from outside reflects off her silken pajamas shirt. Gabe notices her age for the first time that day, in the wrinkles around her eyes and mouth, and the veins on the back of her hand.

Her smile’s just as sharp as when she was his squad’s best sharpshooter however, and he still pities the target in the crosshairs of her scope as much as he did when he saw her skills firsthand, a twenty-odd years ago in the Gulf.

“I thought you had class in the morning,” She teases gently, taking a gander at his phone before looking at his face.

Gabe snorts and retorts promptly, “Last time I checked you were tagging along too.” Before Ana gets the opportunity to ask, he mutters, “I was dicking around with Akande in the chat, so don’t get any ideas…” He pauses, looks down at the screen of his phone for a second, then back at her and asks in a tone of voice that’s supposed to imply he’s being dead-serious here, “ _Hey_. What’s your opinion on drones anyway?”

“Go to sleep,” Ana deadpans, lingers in the open doorway for a moment longer when he pulls an indignant face, drumming her fingertips onto the wooden doorframe one by one, as if she’s expecting something from him.

“Alright, alright. Goodnight, Ana… And close the door behind you, okay? I’m not getting up anymore. _Jesus_ , the floor’s fucking frozen,” Gabe grumbles the last part, emphasizing his point by wrapping the comforter around his bare shoulders. His ‘nasty-as-fuck’ scar starts to itch again.

She rolls her eyes –  but he totally spots the small smile tugging on the corners of her mouth – and tells him, “Sleep well, Gabriel _._ We’re having breakfast at six thirty, okay?”

“Yeah, yeah, as long as I get some coffee, I’ll be fine,” he says, ignoring the impulse to claw at his shoulder by nabbing the bridge of his nose between thumb and forefinger and rubbing up the spot between his brows. Ana takes this as her cue to close the door. He tilts his head back and stares at the ceiling, eyes squinted, massaging his forehead until the itch fades.

It’s half past one at night when the buzz of his phone draws him from an uneasy state where his consciousness kept teetering the border between being asleep and being awake, coherent thoughts pin-pricking at the faraway corners of his mind. Gabe grumbles, dragging the heels of his palms down his face, and clambers upright in a sitting position.

He should’ve just rolled over, facing the backrest of the settee, and tighten his grip on the red tie, twisting and stroking the soft fabric between his fingers. Instead, Gabe’s unlocking the screen his phone, the comforter bundled up around his waist. Goosebumps form on his forearms from the cold.

_She texted back_ , he thinks, staring blankly at the notification on top of his screen, blocking out a part of the pic from last year’s New Year’s Eve party; _she fucking texted you back and your fucking hands are starting to shake again, Reyes._

« Ouh là là », the first message simply reads, followed by a heart-eyes emoji. « What did I do to deserve such a treat? »

“Being you, Amélie,” Gabe impulsively whispers under his breath, gently thumbing over the words on the screen before scrolling down to see the rest of what she said.

« I have told you before, Gabriel, » the string of messages continues, with its clipped off sentences, as if she didn’t have much time to type and had to hurry up, constantly hitting send. Maybe she was just getting in her car after an _appointment_. « I think you’re a very gentle man / And an inspirational one too! / I’m afraid I’m getting ‘collante’ again… ».

His eyebrows furrow together when he recognizes the word, _clingy_.

Raking his teeth over his bottom lip, he sags against the settee with his shoulder, holding up his weight, and leans his head against the backrest. His chest feels so inexplicably _light_. Grinning widely, Gabriel begins to type that he wanted to show off his underwear the same way she showed off her silky kimono—and in his eagerness Gabe makes a few typo’s that he corrects by deleting the whole word and typing it again.

 « I don’t mind you getting clingy ». There should be more emphasis in that statement, because how else is Amélie going to _know_ that he means it more than he could possibly say? « I really don’t / Trust me on this one, ok ».

After a few seconds, the blue circle in the bottom corner lights up again, and Gabe hadn’t counted on her responding _right away_ , so he sucks his lower lip into his mouth again and sucks on it hard in trepidation, focusing on the weird sound it makes.

« I will, » Amélie responds with a winky-face, possibly trying to add a touch of frivolity to the conversation. _Don’t psychoanalyze it Reyes_. « I actually thought you were asleep / Did I wake you up? ».

« Nerves for the lecture tomorrow / I guess ». Gabe omits the part where he was so anxious over her silence that his hands started shaking and his stomach was tied up in knots, because he might be out of the loop when it comes to social interaction but he knows that’s a huge _turn off_ no matter what _._

They text back and forth until a two thirty, covering a whole range of subjects. Gabe didn’t even realize that one of the neighbors turned off the porchlight, finding himself in near complete darkness when he looks away from his phone.

_It’s going to be a pain in the ass to get up in the morning_ , Gabriel muses sluggishly while reading over Amélie’s last text again. He isn’t a twenty-something year old anymore. If he goes to sleep now, he’ll have at least three hours of shut-eye, which is still better than pulling an all-nighter. On the other hand, the conversation they have going on right now is just so _comfortable_ ; the kind of conversation where your heart’s open and vulnerable and the person you’re talking to doesn’t even have to try to worm their way in. Not when they’re already there.

Gabe begrudgingly ends up texting, « I should really go to sleep / Can’t give a bad first impression to ‘my students’ ». 

He knows that it’s selfish to keep Amélie up all night, since she probably wakes up early too tomorrow, for work.

« I’m positive that you will keep them in check, » she replies jokingly.

Gabe imagines her saying those words to him face to face, with that soft, private smile she always seems to smile when he’s nervous around her. Breath rushes from his nostrils when he thinks about some strands of hair slipping free from her ear and him being brave enough to brush them back, bring his knuckles to her cheek. His phone buzzes noisily in his hands, pulling him abruptly from his train of thought.

« Hope you can fall asleep easier now / It was so nice talking to you », Amélie texts, with a typo in the word _talking_ , the ‘g’ and ‘n’ switched around. « Sweet dreams Gabriel ».  

Gabe grins, stupid-drunk from lack of sleep— _One text message and you’re grinning like a lovesick puppy,_ Ana’s words ghost around his head for a split-second—wishes her a good night too and slowly slides down the backrest sideways, until he’s lying down, trying to make out the shape of things in the dark on the floor.

_I’ll smell the coffee in the morning_ , Gabe thinks, searching blindly for the red tie somewhere under the comforter, _and admit that maybe I’m in over my head._

.


	9. Chapter 7.5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “I want to have with Amélie what you and Reinhardt have.” 
> 
> Ana had been fumbling around in her deerskin handbag for her keys when he said those words. Even at seven in the morning, it was pitch dark out, and underneath the light of the street lanterns the fog was thick, palpable almost. His breath came out in visible puffs. She glanced at him from her peripheral, half of her arm swallowed up by her bag. 
> 
> He’d scraped his throat then, embarrassed, and took out his pack of cigarettes, flicked open the lid and pulled one out.
> 
> “Long-distance relationships aren’t all that,” Ana teased back, watching how he struggled to light his cigarette. She finally managed to snatch her keys up from somewhere deep down her deerskin bag and unlocks her car with the press of a button. The taillights flared up in the darkness. The bright red gleam shimmered onwards in the morning mist. Gabe rolled his eyes and took a long, slow drag from his cigarette, tilted his head backwards and blew the wisp of smoke towards the dark sky.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i'm so sorry for the long wait -- and this isn't even a 'real' chapter too... real life has kept me insanely busy, plus my interests have been shuffling around too, so i couldn't finish this as quickly as i wanted to. but, anyway. have some 'yes i'm really in love holy shit' gabe?

They stop in front of the intersection between the US-20 and Pecatonica road. One car takes the turn in the direction of Rockford, its headlights a momentary flash of white across the inside of Ana’s car, bright and unfiltered. Unlike the red traffic light that’s left to shimmer unevenly in the dense morning fog. Gabe had hoped he would be able to take some short clips of the road to the training facility with his phone and send them to Amélie. Most of the scenery is comprised of farmlands and meadows, dotted across with transmission poles and broad-leaved trees. No such luck however.

_« I wanted to send you a vid of my drive to the facility but the weather’s ten shades of fogged up »_. He’d sent her after a couple minutes in the car, when it became clear that the mist wouldn’t let up.

When the traffic light flickers to green, Ana brings her foot down on the gas and the engine of her Toyota hums loudly in response.

Gabe meanwhile squirms around in the passenger’s seat, attempting to get comfortable enough to powernap. He crosses his arms tightly over his chest to keep his hands warm, tilts his head to the side and closes his eyes, trying to drown out the sound of tires rolling over old, cracked concrete and Elvis Costello crooning along on the radio.

The alarm on his phone went off at five to six this morning and knocked him right out of his deep sleep—His eyes shot open, his body tensed up under sheets and his mind took a good second or two to catch on. Gabriel was surprisingly awake in that moment, and dragging the heel of his palm down his face, knew that the feeling couldn’t possibly last for the whole day. His body was shivering all over when he got out of bed.

They hit a bump in the road. He mutters a _what the hell_ under his breath and draws closer into himself, screwing his eyes shut harder and rubbing his cheek against his shoulder. Ana casts a glance at him and laughs amusedly. Skyping with Reinhardt put her in a good mood. Gabe’s spent a solid five minutes lingering in the opening doorway to the kitchen, not daring to intrude on that moment. She was sitting at the kitchen table underneath the large hanging lamp, cradling a mug of tea in her hands and listening with a soft smile to what Reinhardt was saying.

Once Ana caught him standing there awkwardly in the doorway, she waved him over and got up to make some coffee. Reinhardt’s boisterous voice boomed over the speakers in greeting, making the room come alive in a few seconds notice. Ana turned all the lights on and the interior of the kitchen was reflected in the window looking out over the backyard.

Soon enough, the fragile quiet of an intimate moment shared between two long-distance lovers disappeared completely.

The steady dripping of the coffee machine became a noise on the backdrop, overshadowed by their amiable conversation. Gabe lathered some peanut butter on one side of his sandwich and noted that Reinhardt was way too energetic in the morning – and when Reinhardt jokingly mentioned the time difference, Gabe merely replied with a groggy _fuck it_ , twisting his knife deeper into the jar of strawberry jam _._

It’d been painfully obvious that Reinhardt was skyping over his phone. Especially since whenever he moved around in his chair – somewhere on a terrace with a view of a main street in some rustic Swiss mountain village – the camera of his phone couldn’t keep up and his face became a blur of pink and silver.

Gabe groggily blinks his eyes open, drumming his fingers along the expanse of his right flank, and watches bleary-eyed how the misty scenery flashes by. He was thinking about something he confessed to Ana after they went outside, the morning air cold against their faces.

_“I want to have with Amélie what you and Reinhardt have.”_

Ana had been fumbling around in her deerskin handbag for her keys when he said those words. Even at seven in the morning, it was pitch dark out, and underneath the light of the street lanterns the fog was thick, palpable almost. His breath came out in visible puffs. She glanced at him from her peripheral, half of her arm swallowed up by her bag.

He’d scraped his throat then, embarrassed, and took out his pack of cigarettes, flicked open the lid and pulled one out.

_“_ Long-distance relationships aren’t _all that_ ,” Ana teased back, watching how he struggled to light his cigarette. She finally managed to snatch her keys up from somewhere _deep_ down her deerskin bag and unlocks her car with the press of a button. The taillights flared up in the darkness. The bright red gleam shimmered onwards in the morning mist. Gabe rolled his eyes and took a long, slow drag from his cigarette, tilted his head backwards and blew the wisp of smoke towards the dark sky.

“I meant the _commitment_ obviously,” he didn’t mean to sound so exasperated – must’ve been the exhaustion –  but she took the tone of his voice and the scowl on his face in stride.

The name’s muttered softly under his breath in a hiss almost – _jesus christ –_ as he flicked a spine of ash from his cigarette. He smoked the cig halfway through before crushing the butt under the heel of his shoe.

Ana held the door open for him with a grin and leaned in when he had clambered into the passenger’s seat, a couple of rebellious hairs escaped her braid and slipped free from underneath her headscarf as she did.

“I know what you meant, Gabriel,” she’d then said conspiratorially, patting him on the thigh a couple of times. “And you deserve it, the commitment, the love, the affection.” Here a crease appeared between her brows, near invisible in the dark. “I just hope this won’t blow up in your face.”

Softly, Gabe had replied to that, “You an’ me both, Ana.”

They’re already driving down West Pearl City road when Gabe finally gives up on trying to nap. He’d sunken into an uneasy, featherlight sleep when they were close to Freeport – forehead plastered against the window, hands limply in his lap, eyes shifting behind closed lids – but he kept waking up, groaning lowly before drifting off again. It’s still dark, but the fog’s lifted. He dimly watches the glow of the headlights pass over the cars on the parking lot of a used car dealer.

Ana rounds the corner at the Cedar Crest ice-cream shop, passing by the gas pump in front, and drives through Main street. From then on, it’s another fifteen minutes of meadows, trees and electricity poles before they reach the facility.

He lights a cigarette on the parking lot. Behind the chain-linked fence, the acres of land they use for all sorts of military exercises touch the faraway horizon, where the sun’s starting to rise. Ana zips open her handbag, puts her keys away and fishes around for her badge, _tsk_ -ing under her breath when she doesn’t find it right away. Gabe pats the pocket of his suit jacket, just to make sure his is where it should be.

It feels like coming home, in a sense. Blackwatch has been a part of his life for over twenty years, and even when he was assigned a desk job at HQ back in Virginia, he frequently flew over to teach at this training facility too.

“You go on ahead to the locker rooms,” Gabe tells Ana after they’ve badged through the security gates and made their way to the reception. When you enter through the automatic glass doors, you’re greeted by a mural on the opposite wall, detailing the Blackwatch logo, motto and a timeline of the organization’s history. “I’m going to swing by McCree first.”

“He shares an office with Maria,” she says in response, before taking a quick look at her watch. “He should be here already—”

Gabe interrupts her musing, “You mean Estrada? _Shit_ , who thought putting those two together in a room was a good idea?”

“ _I did_ ,” Ana responds with a sharp smirk, crossing her arms across her chest and shifting her weight onto one leg. He recognizes the look on her face and shakes his head, trying to hide his smile from her. “They have a similar approach to…” here, she trails off, searching for the right word to use to make her whole matchmaking scheme seem less obvious. “ _Teaching._ ”

“ _Right_ ,” he draws it out, as if he’s still tasting the word in his mouth. “And how’s the teaching working out for them?” Gabriel shoots back mercilessly, propping an arm against the wall and leaning into the curve of his elbow, staring at Ana with thinly-veiled amusement.

She rolls her eyes, dismissing his question with a wave of the hand, and replies primly, “It’s a steep learning curve. Kind of like… A parabola, Gabriel.” There’s a curt pause and Gabe furrows his brows at her. “Or is it a hyperbole? I always forget which is which.”

“Catch you at lunch, Amari,” Gabe says, pushing himself off the wall in one swift, fluid movement and consequently disappearing into the hallway.

He walks on through the corridor, mirrored in the large, rectangular windows of the classrooms. The sound of his brisk footsteps catches between the ceiling and the linoleum floor tiles, overshadowing the music playing softly from one of the instructor offices at the end of the hall. He’s dressed to impress, in an ashen suit and brown leather oxfords, and he’s even made to match his socks with the color of his tie, wanting to look more than capable of keeping his students in check. Gabe catches his reflection from the corner of his eye. He pauses to adjust his waistcoat around his flanks and gives his own reflection an affirmative nod.

McCree has his back to him when he saunters into the office and pushes the door shut behind him. It closes with a barely audible ‘click’. Creedence Clearwater Revival’s playing from the desktop speakers and John Fogerty’s gravelly voice adds perfectly to the slightly dreary atmosphere in the room. The window’s open and the smoke from the cigar in the ashtray slowly drifts outside. Pale sunlight drags the shadow of the ratty cowboy hat resting on the desk all over the floor. McCree scratches the side of his head, brings both hands to the keyboard and starts typing again. The rhythm sounds a bit clunky because of his arm prothesis.  

“Still listening to songs as old as your dad?” Gabe prompts in lieu of a greeting, leaning back against the door and idly skirting his fingers against the wood.

Jesse turns to look at him, propping his prothesis on the backrest of the office chair, and grins at him. His beard’s longer than the last time he saw him. “Still don’t know how to knock and say howdy like a regular person, boss?”

“Regular people don’t say _howdy_.” He pronounces the word as if it leaves a sour taste in his mouth, but the way he looks at McCree’s telling enough; it’s all in good humor.

After the incident, Jesse’s made a habit of rolling his sleeves up to his elbows, high enough to show off the prothesis Angela designed for him, low enough to hide the way it slots together with his skin. He drums his metallic fingers against the backrest and they glint a brownish red in the pale light, and he hums, a low sound from somewhere deep down his throat. “Well, I’ve always thought that to be a shame, boss,” he says, a smile tugging on the corner of his mouth.

“How you’ve been?” Gabe asks then, crossing his arms over his chest.

“Doin’ good,” McCree replies while unhurriedly reaching for the cigar burning in the ashtray and taking a long drag. The bright glare of the computer screen chisels out his profile as he tips his head back. He blows a thin, smoky ring towards the ceiling like a real show-off and adds, “Takin’ full advantage of Maria’s absence, as you can see.”

He shakes the cigar to emphasize his point.

Gabe snorts and imagines for a moment how the office makes way for the inside of an army tent somewhere at the Afghan border; the dry, desert wind shakes at the tent flap and sneaks a handful of sand inside. _I was just takin’ full advantage of your absence, as you can see, boss._ Even after he pointed out that it could be considered blatant insubordination, Jesse still didn’t take to calling him ‘sir’. _You look more like a ‘boss’ type of guy, so I figured you might like it when I call you that._

“Ana’s convinced you two are going to end up together though,” Gabe comments, tipping his head back and staring at the cabinet at the back of the room, a fixed point past the brim of the computer screen. “Didn’t have the heart to tell her Estrada’s a lesbian.”

“You didn’t have the…” here, Jesse laughs. “Now that’s a pile of horseshit, and you an’ I both know it. I wanted to tell Ana myself, I truly did, but it’s hardly my place to discuss Maria’s private life.”

Gabe feels his phone buzz violently against his chest a couple of times, tucked away in the breast pocket of his suit jacket where a folded handkerchief should’ve been, and he immediately stifles the overwhelming urge to check his messages. Amélie’s on the forefront of his mind, wild and beautiful, like she looked when they said their last goodbyes. He hopes beyond _hope_ it’s a text from her. _Focus, you son of a bitch._ Breath escapes him through his nostrils in a long rush. _Focus._

He drags his short-clipped nails over the length of his forearm, creasing the fabric of his jacket.

“And how have you been doin’, boss?” McCree asks, raising an eyebrow at the nervous way he busies his hands. They’ve been through the worst together; Jesse knows how to read between the lines, _his_ lines. He looks like he wants to tack something to his question, another one maybe, but he doesn’t. Gabe’s grateful for that.

“I met someone.”

Jesse raises both eyebrows and lifts his gaze away from Gabe’s hands, to his face. “ _Oh_?” He reaches for his cigar again – his cigar, that’s really nothing more than a sorry stub left to smolder abandoned in the ashtray. “Why do I got this itching feelin’ there’s a _but_.”

“She’s an escort. And last night I figured out I’m head over heels for her,” Gabriel admits and clenches his fingers, grabbing onto a fistful of sleeve near the wrist when McCree lets out a long wolf whistle.

He takes a deep breath and continues, far more flippantly than he feels, “Other than that, therapy’s going _great_. I picked up gardening as a hobby, started playing the guitar again, and no fucking way am I quitting smoking. So… I think that summarizes how I’m doing pretty well, don’t you?” There’s an edge to his voice, despite his best efforts to keep it steady.

“Lot to unpack here, boss,” Jesse says in response and eyes him up and down.  His mouth quirks upwards into an easy-going smile. “Sounds like we got some catchin’ up to do, _preferably_ , and you know me, over some drinks.”

Just like that the tension snaps in half and dissipates completely. Gabe barks out a curt laugh, open-mouthed so his teeth are bared to the entire room, and allows his hands to fall limply by his sides.

They chat some more, about the facility and the class he’s about to teach, and make plans for Wednesday evening when the whisky’s ‘buy one, get one free’, also known as McCree’s favorite night at Little John’s Tap. It’s the kind of easy, carefree conversation that proves a sharp reminder of how much Gabe’s missed having Jesse around.

At around nine thirty, they get up and go to the locker rooms to put on their bulletproof vests; it’s mandatory to wear one during lectures or classes on the range, in the storehouse with the military vehicles, or outside, on the training fields. He sneaks a glance at his phone while McCree has his back to him, heart thudding in his chest when it really turns out to be _Amélie_ who texted him.

_« Maybe you can make a video on the ride back? I would very much like that »_ comes the suggestion, followed up by, _« et je te dis merde for your class »_.

“You comin’, boss? Don’t want to keep your audience waiting, after all,” Jesse spurs him on, standing in the open doorway of the locker rooms with the artificial lights gushing in around the contours of his body.

_« Don’t google translate it! it means break a leg, not screw you. »_

Gabe grins despite himself and slips his phone into the back pocket of his pants and nods confidently.

The facility provides a full assortment of tactical gear, firearms and equipment for all kinds of exercises and simulations. Aside from lectures about autosuggestion and interrogation techniques, Gabe has given demonstrations, and _hands-on_ lessons even, about the use of shotguns in non-combat situations.

The storehouse’s a soldier’s green, complete with a supply truck and two combat vehicles, and has a high, arched ceiling streaked through with small, square windows in two neat rows. Gabe tilts his head up to look at the sky as they enter. _It’s going to rain soon_ , he thinks. McCree introduces him to the squad of well-disciplined RAF pilots standing in formation, in the middle of the storehouse.

They salute him dutifully. Gabe seizes them up and down. One of them – young, so terribly young and bright-faced, with a shock of brown hair and freckles on her cheeks – offers him a wide, friendly smile. It’s in the context of the international coalition in Syria that they were invited here for a supplementary training, before they’re sent out into the Syrian and Iraqi airspace on bombing missions. The chance exists that their plane gets shot down and that they will never return to England again. It's not a pleasant thought.

Gabriel loosens the knot of his tie and takes a step forwards, asking flippantly, “So, do any of you guys want me to kick this lesson off with an anecdote or should we dive straight into the psychological warfare?”

.


	10. Chapter 7and three-quarters

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Past the sprawl of her little suburb, with its stand-alone houses and neatly-trimmed hedges and freshly-mowed lawns, Pasadena’s city center dooms up in the distance like a beacon of light, pretty like a picture.
> 
> Goosebumps form along the expanse of her arms. Amélie awkwardly pries the cigarette from between her lips, still holding onto her phone with her ring and pinkie finger and exhales the smoke into open air.
> 
> After a few more puffs, she gets fed up with herself and gets into the double boxspring, supine above the covers. Her towel fans out around her waist as she crosses her legs. She takes another drag and goes through the list of contacts on her phone; the bright light of the screen creates dips of shadow along her face and neck. Her thumb hovers over Gabriel’s name.
> 
> What are the odds he picks up? He must be sound asleep in a bed miles and miles away from her, somewhere in the state of Illinois. She can always just tell him it was a mistake, that she didn’t mean to call him, just send him a message.
> 
> Smoke drifts lazily to the ceiling.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this chapter's not an april fools joke, i swear. also hi, it's been a while, hasn't it? hehe.

It’s sometime after eleven when Amélie pulls up at the intersection with Fountain Avenue. She’s on her way home from a four-hour dinner party for some law firm at Nobu’s; her client was adamant on parading her around as his girlfriend and she accepted the part gracefully. Her wallet’s stuffed with a wad of hundred-dollar bills. Kissing money. For that quick, sloppy blowjob on the backseat of her client’s car. Amélie’s not sure but she might’ve cashed in over three thousand dollars tonight.

The cityscape’s vibrant and alive around her. Blondie’s on the radio. Her fingers drum along the curve of the steering wheel.

Her gaze flicks from the traffic light to the rearview mirror, checking out the size of the hickeys on her neck for a second or two, and then flicks back to the traffic light. Next to her, the driver of a white Honda Civic is getting impatient, inching across the fading paint of the pedestrian’s crossing when the other traffic light changes to orange.

Amélie catches the Mercedes speeding through Fountain Ave from her peripheral and feels something cold settle inside her stomach, sudden like a snowball to the face, when the Honda already staggers forwards to take the turn.

_They’re going to crash_ , she thinks with painstaking clarity. She watches it happen and it’s every bit as spectacular as in the movies. The Mercedes brakes too late, halfway across the intersection already, and nose-dives into the passenger’s side of the other car; the force has them both skidding over to the edge of the curb, almost wheel-barreling into the streetlight. Window glass cascades over the boardwalk. People take out their phones, to call 911 or to take a video.

All Amélie can do is watch the scene helplessly, static between her ears, the steering wheel solid in her iron grip. The traffic light flashes green for her.

The driver of the Mercedes pushes the door open and stumbles out his car onto the street. He folds into himself, shakily, and cradles his head in his hands when he takes in the damage, looking like he’s about to sink down on both knees or puke. Concussed or just in shock, it’s impossible to tell. Some people are trying to wrench the Honda’s door open, but it won’t budge. Amélie looks on blankly when the driver of the Mercedes fumbles to light a cigarette in the middle of the street, as if the sight doesn’t really register.

She sucks in a breath between clenched teeth as the car behind her honks loudly. _Drive_ , _while it’s still green for you_. She knows this, subconsciously, and presses down the gas like she’s done a thousand times before when a traffic light threatened to flick back to red.

Her heart lurches in her chest when her car starts to splutter – _and why the fuck are you still in second?_ – and the battery almost gives in. Amélie quickly shifts to first, flattens the gas pedal, shifts back to second and drives past.

North Fairfax Avenue’s a blur of lights, showing glimpses of the houses and the condos lining both sides of the street, while the clipped, droning voice of her GPS reminds her to take a right to Hollywood Boulevard within half a mile, and again, within a quarter of a mile. Amélie falls back on autopilot, blindly chasing the stare of her car’s headlights.

She dimly wonders if she’s in shock or something, because the absence of feeling starts to _unnerve_.

First thing Amélie does after she staggers inside her house and shakily manages to lock the front door behind her, is shrug off her faux fur coat. She holds onto the console table for a moment, but the real stretch of time escapes her as she simply stands there in the entryway, reimagining the car accident, flipping through the sequences like a picture reel.

She kicks off her heels in afterthought. Can’t even be bothered to adjust the flimsy straps of her little black dress.

The herringbone floor’s like ice under her bare feet.

Amélie walks up the stairs, makes her way down the dark hall on touch, and pauses at the doorway of the room that was supposed to be Gérard’s study. Her fingers curl around the frame as she peers inside.

It’s still unfurnished, and despite Amélie’s best efforts to find suitable things on Amazon, she just can’t seem to decide on anything, not on a desk, not on a bookcase, not on a drawing table. There’s a desk chair still in its box, discarded ever so desolately in the corner, because she’s not sure if it would’ve been to Gérard’s taste. Gérard had designed the study with natural light in mind, had wanted to be surrounded by it when he worked. _White walls. White drapes. And him, at the center of creation._

Her hand falls listlessly to her side. Amélie realizes she left her purse on the console table downstairs, and sighs in frustration, before averting her gaze from the dark, empty room and walking back to the staircase.

When Amélie enters the bathroom, flips on the light and witnesses how messy she left things behind, the sensation of hollowness expands behind her ribs, tangible in the sense that it’s pressing relentlessly against her chest. If she wasn’t so utterly exhausted, the sight might’ve moved her to tears. Her makeup is scattered all over the washing table, there’s so much dirty laundry in the basket, the lid’s left half-open and she can’t even remember the last time she gave the bathtub a good scrub.  

She makes space for her purse, snaps the eyeshadow palette that she left open on the side of the washing table shut and stows it away in her cosmetic bag with the rest of her makeup.

Barely acknowledging her reflection in the mirror, Amélie takes out her phone and puts on the first movement of Vivaldi’s _Summer_. She doesn’t need to catch a glimpse of her face to know she looks like _shit._

Her black dress pools around her ankles in no time.

As the sound of the violin concerto starts to take presence in the bathroom, Amélie unhooks the clasps and takes off the _Agent Provocateur_ bra she got as a gift from a client a while back, pulls down the matching panties and drops them unceremoniously into the wickerwork basket for her high-quality underwear.

With a sigh, she pulls the elastic out of her hair and turns away from the washing table.

Her movements are slow, sluggish. Her mind is still stuck in traffic on the intersection with Fountain Avenue. She climbs into the big empty bathtub, draws her knees up to her chest, reaches for the detachable showerhead and adjusts the settings so she won’t douse herself with icy cold water. Not that being chilled to the bone would’ve mattered to her in this state.

Vivaldi’s violin concerto echoes through the hard spray of water.

After a quick wash, Amélie clambers back out of the standing bath, walks over to the closet, leaving behind wet footprints on the floor tiles, and wraps a big fuzzy towel around her body. Ludovico Einaudi’s _Eros_ now slowly fills the expanse of the bathroom, like a victory march. Usually just hearing the beginning notes of the song are enough to make Amélie want to drop whatever she’s doing, put on her skates and get on the ice.

She carelessly wipes the palm of her hand over the fogged-up surface of the mirror and stares at her reflection.

Some strands of hair are plastered to her wet forehead and streaks of mascara run down her reddened cheeks. Her eyebrows draw together in a frown. Amélie takes a half-empty bottle of micellar water and a couple of cotton pads from the cabinet under the sink and starts to scrub at her eyes. Her evening ritual’s simple, but the thought of moisturizing, combing her hair and brushing her teeth physically tires her out.

Even changing into her pajama’s sounds like a hassle, so she thinks she’ll simply skip out. On everything. Besides, her fingers have been itching for a cigarette the moment she got home.

Amélie suddenly can’t stand the sound of the piano piece anymore and switches off the playlist. It becomes so quiet you could hear a pin drop on the floor. Her breathing’s strained, nostrils flaring, chest rising and falling unevenly, teeth latching onto her inner cheeks. She stares into the mirror and hauls a hand through her hair in a ditch effort to get the biggest knots and tangles out.

_“I’m going to untie your hair now,”_ Gabe’s words ring through her ears meanwhile, lifelike and warm. _“You look more beautiful when it’s down. I like it better.”_

Would Gabe still say the same if he saw her right now, standing naked and forlorn in the confines of her own bathroom, staring blankly at the faucet? She presses the nail of her thumb against her lips, once or twice, lost in thought. Her gaze flits from the empty glass under the mirror to her phone, balancing precariously on the edge of the tableau. Focusing on those moments in Gabe’s bedroom, makes her forget about the crash, about the driver of the Mercedes stumbling out of his car and dry-heaving in the middle of the street.

Even deeper beneath the surface, there’s the vivid memory of that phone call years ago, of rushing to the hospital and helplessly holding Gérard’s hand in ER, the dull shock to her senses when he flatlined, like a backhand to the cheek.

Amélie picks up her phone and slings the strap of her purse over her bare shoulder. She clutches the front of her towel to keep it from falling open and sleepwalks out into the dark hallway. Once she’s inside her bedroom, she rolls up the white, almost see-through blinds and pushes the window open, one-handedly lights a cigarette and sidles up against the window frame, gazing over her backyard.

It was supposed to be a proper garden by now.

Past the sprawl of her little suburb, with its stand-alone houses and neatly-trimmed hedges and freshly-mowed lawns, Pasadena’s city center dooms up in the distance like a beacon of light, pretty like a picture.

Goosebumps form along the expanse of her arms. Amélie awkwardly pries the cigarette from between her lips, still holding onto her phone with her ring and pinkie finger and exhales the smoke into open air.

After a few more puffs, she gets fed up with herself and gets into the double boxspring, supine above the covers. Her towel fans out around her waist as she crosses her legs. She takes another drag and goes through the list of contacts on her phone; the bright light of the screen creates dips of shadow along her face and neck. Her thumb hovers over Gabriel’s name.

_What are the odds he picks up?_ He must be sound asleep in a bed miles and miles away from her, somewhere in the state of Illinois. _She can always just tell him it was a mistake, that she didn’t mean to call him, just send him a message._

Smoke drifts lazily to the ceiling.

Amélie bounces her foot around nervously to the sound of the dial tone, pressing her phone even tighter against her ear, ignoring how the strap of her purse digs into her back.

There’s a curt click where there should’ve been a beep, and then Gabe picks up. “Hey,” he greets, dragging out the vowel, sounding a bit groggy, and every bit as warm as she remembered. “Couldn’t fall asleep?”

 “Hello,” she eventually mumbles, smiling around the stub of her cigarette as her voice echoes back to her. He put her on speaker. Her own breathing proves deafening in the thick silence of her bedroom. “I suppose I’m kind of out of it right now…” Amélie shifts around, wedging her phone between her ear and the pillow; a clump of ash splats onto the bedspread and she tries to wipe it off, clicking her tongue.

She hears him scrape his throat, on the cusp of asking what’s bothering her, and beats him to it, “I didn’t wake you up, did I?”

“No, you didn’t,” Gabe answers, moving around – or at least as far as she can tell, it’s difficult to say for sure. “Doing some very,” a pause, for emphasis, “ _very_ last-minute packing. I’m leaving tomorrow, so Ana figured we should go to Logan’s at least once while I’m here – it’s tradition, or so she _claimed_ –  and we just got back and—” He pauses abruptly.

“Shit. Where… did I put that fucking...” Gabe scrapes his throat and apologizes then. “ _Sorry_. Anyway, what’s up? What do you mean with you’re kind of out of it?” A touch of urgency creeps into his voice as he continues, “You’re okay, aren’t you? I mean, nothing bad happened, right?”

Amélie sucks in a breath between clenched teeth and settles upright in one fluid motion; the knot of her towel comes undone around her breasts. Her purse bumps into her abdomen, the cold leather foreign against her skin.

“No, no, nothing bad happened… to me at least,” she answers, keeping her phone pressed against her ear while she grinds the stub of her cigarette into the ashtray on her nightstand.

“How do I explain? I,” hesitation, brief, she presses on, “I saw a car accident after dinner…” Amélie swallows down the words _with a client_ , shakes her head even if he isn’t there to see it, a force of habit, and presses a hand to her forehead. “I just can’t get these images out of my head. You can understand that, can’t you? With what happened to Gérard – _my husband. Did I ever tell you his name? I don’t remember_ – I… well I don’t really want to be alone with my own thoughts right now.” Her French drawl adds to the resignation in her voice, curling around her _r’_ s.

Gabe’s quiet for a moment, letting everything she’s said sink in if she had to take a guess. Just as she’s about to call out his name, Gabe speaks up again, “ _Hey…_ I’m here for you, Amélie.” Her shoulders relax at the warmth in his voice. She lies down on one side, slides a hand under the pillow and keeps her phone pressed to her ear; her hair’s not completely dry yet and sticks to the back of her neck.

“I’m not… I mean, I don’t have _fucking_ clue how I can help you, but I want to, badly okay, just tell me what to do and I’ll do it, no biggie,” Gabe rambles and she can imagine him moving his hands to emphasize certain words in his run-on sentence.

“Keep talking please,” Amélie responds, rubbing her bare legs together. She gives him a few suggestions in a drowsy tone of voice, “About your day or your dinner or whatever is on your mind.”

Gabe barks out a curt, dry laugh and clears his throat afterwards; on the background there’s the muffled sound of things being put away. “You _don’t_ wanna know half of the bullshit that’s on my mind, trust me on this one.” He sighs loudly –  _she imagines him hauling a hand through his mop of curls here –_ and perks up again, “I sent you a couple of snaps of my dinner… I totally understand if you weren’t in the mood to check ‘em by the way.”

Over the course of the week, they must’ve sent each other hundreds of snaps: pictures of where they were, of what they were eating or drinking, and a bunch of selfies too of course. 

“But, anyway, the food was _real_ good, like we got a bunch of appetizers and just binged on those,” Gabe continues, starting to check off some of the things they’ve ordered. “We got quesadillas, nachos, mac an’ cheese wedges, wings… Name it and it was probably on one of our plates, _heh._ ” There’s still an endearing twinge of nervousness in his voice, like a schoolboy on his first day.

Amélie laughs a bit, gets her hand from under the pillow and rubs down her stomach, down her abdomen. _She shouldn’t_. Her fingers linger on her right inner thigh, thumb smoothing circles on cold skin; her feet are twin blocks of ice.

He keeps the one-sided conversation going. Reminisces about the night at the bar with Jesse, getting stupid-drunk on whiskey shots and singing along to music coming from the authentic 1950s jukebox in the corner. Gabe sent her a selfie when he got back to Ana’s place, completely plastered. It’s a shame she didn’t save it to her phone, because his open-mouthed, _shit-eating_ grin and twinkling eyes are indelibly iron-branded on her memory. Amélie absent-mindedly caresses her upper legs one by one, all the way up to her hips.

“What did you have to drink tonight? Whiskey again?” She asks when he stops talking for a moment, when the sound of his suitcase getting zipped up resounds through the phone. By now she knows every inflection of his voice.

Amélie also knows that if she’d drag a finger along her slit, her finger would come back _wet_.

She shifts around, dragging her knees up to her chest, in fetal position, the thin strap of her purse marking up her skin even further. “Just a regular diet coke,” Gabe answers after a long-stretched yawn, the grogginess in his voice amplifies how tired he must be. Sinking her teeth down her bottom lip and pulling it into her mouth, she’s suddenly struck by the notion that time seems to have eluded her, that she simply has no clue what time it is. Guilt crashes down on her, _because he has a flight tomorrow and she’s keeping him up._

“ _Amélie?_ ” Gabe calling out her name makes her release her lower lip with an inaudible *pop*. “Are you feeling less out of it, now?”

Rolling onto her back – on the fluffy, peach-colored towel, on the thin leather strap of her purse – Amélie hums under breath and answers, “I think you made me come back to myself, Gabriel…” she loves the French pronunciation of his name, so she takes extra care to make it roll of her tongue. “How do you manage all by yourself with the memories about—” here, she hesitates to speak the word _war_ and tries to come up with a substitute, comes up blank “— _you know_. When everything gets too much.”

“Sometimes I manage fuck-all,” Gabe says truthfully. She can hear him settle down on the settee and holds her breath when he speaks up again, “Usually I try to keep my mind off of it by gardening or exercising.”

_Manage fuck-all_ ’s an apt description of his violets in a heap of potting ground and broken ceramic on the floor, she thinks callously, but anger’s better than the unsettling numbness she experienced. “Are you going to get new flowers for your kitchen?” Amélie asks then, selfishly prolonging the conversation for just that little while longer, resting her hand on her lower abdomen and staring up at the ceiling.

“Yeah, I think so. Probably violets again, because I like taking care of them,” He replies, and his voice drops an octave at the end of the sentence, making her stretch her legs and dig the back of her head into the pillow.

Gabe swallows dryly. It’s a quick, subvocalized click that seems to come from incredibly close-by, as if he’s right there next to her in bed, curving around her body, his mouth a hairbreadth away from her ear, and she realizes he must’ve taken his phone in hand. “It’s stupid but I’m sorta happy my rambling made you feel better. All it’s ever managed to do for me is give me a fucking migraine,” he confesses lowly.

“You should go to sleep, Gabriel.” Amélie licks her lips, gazes at her own body and adds, “I should, _aha_ , probably put some clothes on and go to bed as well.” Her sentence is capped off with a wry, self-depreciating laugh.

She can hear his sharp intake of breath, a crackled sound over the phone, brings her hand down even lower in reaction, feels the two-day stubble growing on her pubic bone. It’s a dangerous game of chicken she’s playing. _Swerve or collide._

“You’re _killing me_ , Amélie. _Shit_ … Fuck, you’re _really_ naked over there, aren’t you?” His question’s strictly rhetorical, but it’s almost prompts her to retort, to react, end the call and send him a snap as proof. _Look_ , she wants to say, _this is what you’ve done to me, Gabriel._

_You made me come back to myself._

When the window bangs against the wall and the draft creeps into the room, Amélie starts to shiver all over. She bunches the sides of the towel in her fist and tries to keep it closed around her chest. Not getting under the sheets was a bad idea in retrospective, she mentally chides with chattering teeth and curls her toes to get some sensation back into them.

“Amélie? Are you still there?”

She closes her eyes and raises her hand back up to the column of her throat, reaffirms her own existence through touch. “I am,” Amélie whispers, concentrating on the cool smoothness of her own skin. “Will you schedule an appointment with me when you get back from your trip?” There’s no reason to say that she wants to see him outright, not when it’s so obvious from her tone of voice, from the way she phrased that question.  

“Yeah, I was thinking ‘bout it, about having you over again…” He’s whispering too, as if they’re together in some secluded corner, just the two of them hidden away from the rest of the world. “I’d finally get you to try some of my killer negroni and I’d play the guitar for you.”

She cracks her eyes open, barely able to differentiate with the world behind closed eyelids. “I’d like that,” she clears her parched throat and repeats herself. “I’d like that a lot.”

“You have no clue how fucking happy it makes me to hear you say that,” Gabe says softly and it’s like a stab in the gut, bleeding warm emotion all inside her belly.

After wishing him a good night and hanging up, Amélie checks the time on her phone – it’s 3:36AM and her battery’s close to being completely dead at 9% – and she finally slips the narrow, leather strap off her shoulder, then puts her purse next to the ashtray on the nightstand and gets up. Her body aches when she stands upright, but she doesn’t care.

She closes the windows and rolls down the blinds, shutting her bedroom off from the outside world like she’s shut off from everything except the heat coiling down her stomach, constricting her chest. _Swerve or collide._

Amélie takes a deep, steadying breath and walks over to the closet to put her warmest pajamas on.

.


	11. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Hey,” Gabe greets easily as he half-leans against the doorframe, head slightly tilted to the side; his curls are flattened and glisten wetly under the lights. His toothy grin’s wide enough to gobble up the world. His hands flex and clench nervously. Some things never change, she thinks, and mirrors the enthusiasm in his grin with a soft smile. He’s dressed smartly in a rich red corduroy jacket, a black button-up and a pair of dress slacks.
> 
> He takes a step back and invites her inside, “Com’on in. Get yourself comfortable.”
> 
> Amélie stands in the center of the entryway, hands her purse to him and unzips her coat, lets it fall open, watching intently how Gabe watches her, how his expression changes and changes back as he rounds in on her, looking for all intents and purposes a man on a mission. He puts both his large palms on her shoulders and helps her slip out of her coat.
> 
> On her heels she’s a couple of inches taller than him and the height difference’s almost cute, because she can catch the shape of the jagged, pale-pink scar running over the bridge of his nose better this way. Amélie can’t believe how much she wants him and all those stray little fantasies from this afternoon come rushing back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> still not dead, but still slow as ever~

.

After a two-hour-long meeting with the IT department—a meeting she simply couldn’t miss as head of the online customer service team—Amélie wants nothing more than to plop down at some café’s terrace and laze away the remaining hours between now and her appointment with Gabe.

She puts her shades on the second she walks out of the parking lot elevator. More for show than anything else since it’s been cloudy the entire day.

It’s drafty in the underground garage. She draws her gray overcoat close with one hand at the base of her throat. Her car’s parked closest to the exit. Amélie slips into the driver’s seat, starts up and gets out of the parking space, thinking about heading off to that café right next to the dance studio she visited a lot when she still had the time and drive to practice; she remembers they served their coffee strong and their _shakshuka_ spicy. It shouldn’t take more than ten minutes to get there.

She drives up to the automatic barriers, rolls down her window and scans her badge, then drives onto Fairfax avenue.

At the interchange with San Vincente boulevard Amélie throws a quick glance at the shoebox on the backseat while impatiently tapping her fingers on the steering wheel. She didn’t want to show up at Gabe’s place in her well-worn loafers, expensive as they were when she bought them, and brought her only pair of Louboutin heels along. When the traffic light flicks to green, Amélie heads on through Little Ethiopia, passing by a Starbucks and the Beverly West Healthcare complex. Most restaurants are already setting up shop for the evening.

She mutters a dirty curse under her breath when a food truck turns onto Fairfax avenue from Packard street, driving well below the speed limit, and forces her to brake on and off. It’s a relief when she can take the left to Pico boulevard.

With a stroke of luck Amélie manages to find a free parking spot a two-minute walk away from the café and claims it for herself, then hides the shoebox under the passenger’s seat, locks her car and gets a parking ticket. She enters the café, purse in hand and shades still on, finding the place rather empty, takes a table at the window, overlooking the patio and street, and slips off her coat and puts down her shades.

The interior of the café hasn’t changed much since she last visited: the wooden furniture with metal finish, together with the square windows and the uncovered lighting and wiring along the ceiling give an industrial touch to the decor.

Thumbing absentmindedly through the menu, Amélie slumps against the backrest of the chair, feet kicked out in front of her and thinks on her meeting with Gabe this evening. Ever since she heard from the agency that he booked an appointment with her, she’s been beside herself in excitement. Like a buzz through her system.

It’s a striking contrast with how emotionally withdrawn she became after Gérard’s death. At work Amélie’s gained the reputation of being an ice queen, preferring to set marks for herself and hitting them one by one rather than socializing. Her level of professionalism earned her a spot as head of the online customer service team. She’s respected throughout the office, but she’s not particularly well-liked by her colleagues from the other departments.

The people at IT especially never forgave her for flat out telling Hana – their latest graphic designer – that she was too young and inexperienced for the position.

She doesn’t want to think about work however when she has something much more promising to look forward to and turns back to the menu, deciding on what to get for dinner. One of the baristas is mouthing along the lyrics of the indie pop song playing through the speakers.

After one of the waitresses stopped by to take her order, Amélie grabs her phone and logs onto the café’s Wi-Fi to check her social media. She tilts her head to the side, scrolling through a list of notifications from facebook— _she only has an account to keep in touch with her family and friends back in France_ —and from snapchat.

Gabe continued their chat from this morning and snapped her a couple of pics too. Her mouth curves into a small smile.

« Going grocery shopping / And with that I mean I’m gonna buy some booze, » he wrote her, followed by a snap of a bottle of Plymouth, a bottle of Campari and a bottle of Martini Rosso in a shopping basket and nothing else.

His hand catches her eye: she can see the veins standing out against his sun-kissed skin and the small, dark spots on his knuckles that she suspects to be bruises. She should really ask him about those. « Got something healthy too, » he’d typed, finishing the sentence with an emoji of an orange. Amélie lightly shakes her head, still smiling, props an elbow on the table and reloads the snap.

After typing up a short reply, Amélie pockets her phone and listlessly looks around the café. She spots a couple of magazines and newspapers two tables over and goes over to get them.

She settles back down, one leg over the other and head held high, flips through the pages of last month’s Cosmo before she gets bored halfway through the issue and reaches for the LA Times. It’s been a while since she’s last had time to sit down and simply read a newspaper. Brings back memories of Sunday mornings spent lazing around with Gérard, breakfast in bed, buttered toast and orange juice.

Lou Rawls’ Scotch and Soda starts to play through the speakers. There’s an interview about the Lancaster project with Vishkar’s official spokesperson on page four and Amélie’s promptly reminded of the fact she hasn’t checked in with Satya since their last lunch date.

It’s a poor excuse to say her life’s been hectic lately – she admits it the moment she thinks it – but working two jobs doesn’t leave a lot of room to maneuver a healthy social life as well.

Her grip on the newspaper tightens subconsciously. She forces herself to take a breather and to relax her shoulders, and then skips to page four, slightly tilting her head and narrowing her brow as she’s met with a large picture of Sanjay Korpal, Vishkar’s spokesperson, lounging in a leather armchair.

While Amélie’s engrossed reading the opening paragraph, a waitress brings over her cappuccino topped off with a foam-shaped heart. She acknowledges her with a curt nod and draws back a bit to make space. Lou Rawls’ saxophone follows the grainy notes of his voice as he drawls in a cigar-smoked voice how he’s feeling high. She shifts in her seat, doubles up the paper and brings the cup to her mouth, eyes narrowed to slits as she keeps staring at the guy’s picture. Sanjay just looks so incredibly smarmy; his smile reminds her of a receptionist during check-out.

_Okay_ , she thinks, _you should really text Satya_.

Amélie puts down her cup, presses a napkin to her mouth, leaving a smudged brown-and-pink lipstick stain behind, and takes out her phone. Some strands of hair escape her ponytail as she dips her head.

« **Gabe** is typing… » appears in a drop-down window on her screen.

She rubs her knees together, trying not to think about what his face might look like when he pours her a negroni or the way he would draw his guitar onto his lap—trying very pointedly _not to think_ about how he’d look drawing _her_ onto his lap and how unbelievably good his rough palms felt against her naked skin last time she was at his place, and opens WhatsApp.

The last message in the chat with Satya dates from the day before they met up for lunch at the Church & State. She squashes the sense of awkwardness that comes with not talking to a friend for weeks on end and showing up in their inbox out of the blue. _« **Gabe** sent you a message! »_

Amélie bites the inside of her cheek, starts her text to Satya with a simple ‘hello’ and writes how she read the interview with Sanjay and wondered how she was doing.

Once the two checkmarks next to her message turn blue, Amélie immediately presses down on the snapchat notification.

« fuck meetings had enough of them back in virginia / nothing a stiff drink and some kfc couldn’t fix tho » Gabe’s messages lack their usual punctuation and it’s easy to imagine him in the middle of cleaning his apartment for their appointment, _for her_ , making the bed or vacuuming the living room but still stopping to text back. She props her elbow back on the tabletop, chin in the cradle of her palm, and snaps a pic of her cappuccino.

Pink lipstick neatly decorates the rim of the white cup; the foam is so smudged up from those few sips the heart’s completely gone.  

« Just coffee for now… » She slowly rakes her teeth over her lower lip and pops it back out as she types the next sentence, _« You’re going to serve me something stiff, right? »_ Amélie hesitates to press send, rubbing her palm over her cheek until the skin’s sore and frowning at the screen as she reads and rereads the text. She wants to come across as witty and sultry, wants him to think of her peeling her panties off, wants him to think what she was thinking earlier. Her in his lap. His hands on her legs, her thighs, _her ass_.

Gabe answers before she can make up her mind, so she deletes the message all together. « i’ll serve u something stronger soon sorry i’m dusting my bookshelves and there’s a fucking avalanche of dust i’m sneezing like shitcrazy ».

Her gaze softens. Amélie taps the nail of her pinkie finger against her teeth and types up a short text with her thumb, « à tes souhaits ».

Before she gets a chance to type the translation, which -really- wouldn’t amount to much more than _it’s Gesundheit_ _but in French_ , the waitress stops by her table and serves her the bowl of shakshuka she ordered with a slice of whole wheat bread. Amélie draws back to give her some space, watching how she rearranges the bowl and puts down the cutlery. Her phone’s a comforting weight in her hand.

“Enjoy,” the waitress says with a smile.

Amélie responds in kind, offers a curt ‘thanks’ and a nod that isn’t more than a dip of the chin. She turns her attention back to the chat. Her dinner’s piping hot, wafting thin wisps of steam, and some of the poached eggs are still popping open across the tomato sauce. After typing what she wanted to type, she puts her phone down and drapes two paper napkins across her lap. Doesn’t even want to think about spilling sauce on her clothes.

She can’t very well show up at Gabe’s place in just her bra, even if his reaction would be worth it.

Dinner’s a slow wasting of time. Amélie eats carefully, takes small sips of water after every few bites and finishes her coffee that’s gone stale and cold by then with a grimace before heading off to the bathroom, purse in hand, to brush her teeth and reapply her makeup. When she passes by the counter, she asks for the check. Amélie settles back down at the table, one leg tucked underneath her, phone in hand to reply to Gabe’s text, sunlight dragging streaks of dark, dark brown in her hair, and when the waitress comes with the bill, she pays with her credit card and puts her shades back on. Leaves the café with another hour or so to burn.

She aimlessly walks past the spot where her car’s parked and treks onwards along the sidewalk with a brisk pace, catching glimpses of her reflection in the various shop windows from the corner of her eye. _Ugh,_ _why isn’t it eight o’clock already—_ Amélie thinks annoyed and keeps on walking straight ahead.

There’s a florist at the corner of South Belford Street and the sight of the flowers showcased inside stops her dead in her tracks. Amélie fumbles with the zipper of her purse and grabs her pack of cigarettes. She lights one and slowly paces along the length of the shop, peering inside through the windows as if she’s looking for something specific.

Arrangements with roses, hydrangea and lilies are lined up on high tables. Orchids and tulips in vases too. On the end of the long table, there’s a basket with multi-colored African violets, and Amélie wonders if Gabe already replaced his after he accidentally smashed them to the ground.

The violets behind the glass look beautiful with big, glossy petals. She exhales a wisp of smoke, rounds the store to its entrance guarded by two well-trimmed potted acacias, and peeks through the open doorway. It’d be weird to show up at Gabe’s apartment with flowers, she reasons.

Amélie drops her cigarette to the ground, grinds the butt under her heel and adjusts the strap of her purse. From where she stands at the door, she’s already bombarded by the fragrances of dozens of flowers.

_You’re an escort,_ she vehemently reminds herself, _not his date._

Her phone buzzes in the pocket of her coat. Amélie casts one last glance at the basket on the far end of the long table tucked away in the corner of the show window, heaves a heavy sigh and relaxes her shoulders. _Pathetic,_ she sneers and does away with any silly wants she might’ve entertained.

Setting her jaw as if she’s faced with a particularly difficult challenge, she turns away from the entrance and its twin acacias and starts the trek back to her car, takes her phone out of her pocket and unlocks the screen. It’s Gabe and he sent her a snap of his guitar: the chipped green paint somehow adds to the detailed artwork on the instrument’s body. She doesn’t look back at the flower shop, just lights another cigarette.

By the time Amélie’s at her car, the sky’s starting to gloam overhead, slowly easing into dusk and then later into night. She slips into the driver’s seat and pops Gabe’s address into her GPS.

From the café, it’s a twenty-minute drive to his apartment. Her dashboard flickers to life when she turns the key, blinking 7:23 on the clock—plenty enough time. She throws a glance at the side mirror for incoming traffic, pulls on the boulevard in front of an incoming, beat-up Ford Fiesta and revs up the engine, uncaring that the driver in the car behind her flips her off.

Her heart stutters against her ribs when she finally rounds the corner to Gabe’s street and the familiar sight of the small children’s playground across Gabe’s building greets her.

Amélie drives past a row of neatly parked cars. Grips the steering wheel that bit tighter and huffs impatiently when she doesn’t find a free spot in the first five seconds.

Streetlight flashes over the windshield of her car in narrow slots. Her heartbeat’s still a fraction too fast, too erratic, as if she just performed an axel jump during training, and it reminds her of when she slipped her tongue in Gérard’s mouth for the first time, clammy hands and that teenaged _everything_.

Maybe that’s what really annoys her so much about the slight queasiness in her stomach, about the skyrocketing nerves, how juvenile it is, how much it reminds her of when she fell in love with Gérard.

While Gabe should just be a client, _should just be a friend._

Swerve or collide, remember?

Amélie manages to park her car somewhere halfway the street and rests her hands flat on the steering wheel for a moment, staring straight at the trunk of a Nissan X-TRAIL with a yellow ‘baby on board’ sticker wedged in the bottom corner of the window, trying to get a grip, to straighten herself out. _Je m’en fiche_. She cranks the handle and jerks the front seat back, kicks off her loafers and reaches for the shoebox with her Louboutins. Puts them on.

Before she swings the door open, she flicks her gaze to the rearview mirror and digs her teeth into the plush of her lower lip.

She combs through her hair with her fingers, fixes her lipstick, opens the neckline of her coat and unbuttons the first three buttons of her blouse to show off some more cleavage. Takes a breather for the umpteenth time this evening and gets out of the car with her purse in hand. Her heels click on the sidewalk, staccato.

By the time she’s standing in front of Gabe’s door, she’s entirely composed, features drawn in a stoic mask, back stiff and shoulders straight. Her heart’s threatening to escape through her throat, so that’s why she’s keeping her mouth shut tight.

“Hey,” Gabe greets easily as he half-leans against the doorframe, head slightly tilted to the side; his curls are flattened and glisten wetly under the lights. His toothy grin’s wide enough to gobble up the world. His hands flex and clench nervously. Some things never change, she thinks, and mirrors the enthusiasm in his grin with a soft smile. He’s dressed smartly in a rich red corduroy jacket, a black button-up and a pair of dress slacks.

He takes a step back and invites her inside, “Com’on in. Get yourself comfortable.”

Amélie stands in the center of the entryway, hands her purse to him and unzips her coat, lets it fall open, watching intently how Gabe _watches her_ , how his expression changes and changes back as he rounds in on her, looking for all intents and purposes a man on a mission. He puts both his large palms on her shoulders and helps her slip out of her coat.

On her heels she’s a couple of inches taller than him and the height difference’s almost cute, because she can catch the shape of the jagged, pale-pink scar running over the bridge of his nose better this way. Amélie can’t believe how much she _wants_ him and all those stray little fantasies from this afternoon come rushing back.

Before he can hang her coat away in the sleek, gray-painted coat rack, she bravely touches his wrist and swallows down any doubt when he turns to regard her. He tilts his head inquisitively, nose slightly upturned and mouth parted, ready to pose a question.

Amélie can feel her smile freeze on her face and slowly leans in to press a kiss to his cheek _à la façon française_ , assaulted by the strong, spicy smell of his shower gel.

“I thought I’d greet you appropriately,” Amélie gives in lieu of explanation when he stares wide-eyed at her, caught like a deer in the headlights. Bunching her coat in his big hands. Although given his somewhat menacing appearance, Gabe looks more the tough alley cat than the unassuming deer. Wide, unblinking eyes and everything.

She smiles again, delighted at having him caught off guard, and playfully says, “Well, hello Gabriel. It’s nice to see you again.”

Looking like she snatched the air straight from his lungs, he draws in a sharp breath and regains his composure, falling back into position like a soldier during drills. “ _Well_ , hey there yourself,” he replies earnestly, turning to hang her coat away, looking over his shoulder while continuing, “It’s real fucking nice to see you here again, Amélie. Go on, take a seat, I’ll be right over.”

Gabe gestures in the general direction of the living room; the cut of his jacket accentuates his broad shoulders and narrow waist, and Amélie wants to slip her arms around him from behind and bury her nose in the crook of his thick, muscled neck.

Shaking her head at her own thoughts, she turns away and goes over to the couch. Her heels click on the floorboards. She can hear him behind him, the soft padding of his woolen socks, and then he breaks away to the kitchenette. They both sneak a glance at each other at the same time. Her mouth breaks into an involuntary smile. Amélie settles down on the couch, one leg over the other, and leans forwards to watch Gabe from around the wall.

There’s a vase with a bouquet of baby pink camellias on the counter, so obviously a gift, with the leaves left on the stems and the heavy flowerheads arranged. She wonders who bought them for him.

He’s rummaging around in the cabinets; the sound of clinking glass underscores the companionable silence in his tidied-up apartment. The bright lights above the counter add nuance to the color of his corduroy jacket.

Amélie smooths her palms down her blouse, nonchalantly looking around the living room. There’s not a thing out of place: the furry gray rug under the coffee table’s been vacuumed, the bookshelves dusted off, and the books seem to have been alphabetized, starting with a worn paperback copy of _the Art of War_ and ending with _the Utility of Force_. His guitar rests innocuously against the armchair across the coffee table. She takes one look at the cleaned-out ashtray and flexes her fingers, trying to shake off the urge to smoke. 

Her gaze then falls on the sleek, black electric fireplace. Amélie doesn’t suppose he ever uses it; LA winters are kind, much kinder than winters back in Annecy, and don’t call for any indoor heating at all. Maybe Gabe simply forgot, having been away from home so long, and had the fireplace installed on impulse. It certainly _looks_ homely, welcoming even.

From the corner of her eye, she can watch Gabriel spoon ice blocks into a tall glass. He has this concentrated look on his face, as if it’s from the utmost importance that he doesn’t fuck anything up.

Her toes curl in her heels. Touched by the thought that he’s doing this for her.

Gabe measures out the Plymouth with a shot glass and pours the gin over the ice in the two tall glasses. Repeats this for the Martini and the Campari. He then stirs the drinks, one after the other, sets to work on the orange with a peeler and drops two peels each in the glasses. Amélie licks the seam of her mouth, pinches the tip of her tongue between her teeth when he takes both glasses in hand and stands up straight, to attention.

Outside the sky continues to darken, and the white petals of Gabe’s potted geranium in front of the window stand out more in contrast.

“You doin’ ok?” He asks suddenly when he approaches. It’s hard to miss the splotches on his knuckles when he bends over to place her drink on a coaster on the coffee table, but she catches herself staring and casually slips a few strands of hair behind her ear.

Amélie playfully arches an eyebrow and says, “We’ve been chatting this entire time. Did I say something that worried you, _mon chèri?_ ”

“Nah,” he says in reply, standing upright again and looking down at her with the full weight of his gaze. She regards him quizzically, head tilted to the side, hands in her lap. Gabe continues, “Just know how much of a fucking hassle meetings can be.” His eyes soften, and a smile tugs on the corner of his mouth when she relaxes.

“It was simply…” She pauses as the right word to use escapes her. Shaking her head, Amélie waves the question away. “ _You know_.”

“Oh, I know,” Gabe confirms. He nods at her drink, holding his own in hand, close to his chest, looking the picture of class and refinement even with those old war wounds crisscrossing his face.  

She reaches for her glass and takes a small sip. Skims her tongue over her teeth as the bittersweet taste pervades the cavern of her mouth.

“ _Mmh…_ ” the sound involuntarily rises from her throat. Amélie has never had a negroni before, usually ordering a classic gin & tonic or a margarita on dates with clients. Red wine during dinner, unless the occasion called for white. “I could get used to this.”

His expression turns wistful as the smile on his face falters. Gabe takes a long sip from his drink and puts the glass down on the coffee table, then picks up his guitar and settles down on the armchair. She watches him tune the instrument with surprisingly agile fingers. He plucks the snares; the sound echoing through the quiet living room like a roll of thunder.

“My uncle taught me how to play,” Gabe murmurs softly, placing his palm directly over the sound hole as he looks at her. She stares back him with half-lidded eyes, savoring her drink.

“I guess I was like a replacement for my cousin Santiago or something. He was seventeen when he OD’ed. But back in the seventies, drugs were fucking everywhere in Cali, so it wasn’t really that surprising. Everybody was smoking or snorting something. Santiago was his only kid though and I became like a surrogate son to him…” Gabe stops talking and sighs, figuring he must’ve been rambling.

He starts to play a slowed-down version of the opening gimmick to Chuck Berry’s _Johnny B. Goode_ and says, “Anyway, first thing he taught me were the rock-n-roll classics. Some blues too, even if he only listened to John Lee Hooker.”

Gabe falls quiet again, drawing his shoulders inwards as he repositions his fingers and plays the intro of another song. It’s easy to hear the song’s supposed to be played on an electric guitar. He plucks at the snares and simultaneously maneuvers over the frets, closing his eyes and bobbing his head a bit as the rhythm picks up. Watching him could be considered a form of therapy. Amélie takes another sip from her cocktail and touches her fingertip to the wet rim of the glass, swiping away the lipstick stain as she watches him transfixed.

“I like metal more. If you couldn’t tell by how I’m straight up massacring Iron Maiden right now,” Gabe mutters with something close to humorous self-mockery as he touches the rough pads of his fingers to the fret bars.

Her gaze’s drawn to his face, and she notices the wry curl of his lips. Amélie wants to admit that _no_ , she wouldn’t be able to tell that he was ‘straight up massacring’ Iron Maiden right now when the way he’s playing reminds her of summers spent in the south of Spain with her parents. “Gabriel,” his name comes out soft, a hush against the fast-paced melody from his guitar. “I wouldn’t call a reinvention a murder if I were you.”

There’s a noticeable hitch in his playing that upsets the rhythm. He’s thrown off-balance, and snorts and shakes his head at her words.

“You’re too kind,” Gabe retorts, too soft to be sarcastic, as he focuses on the song again, glancing at her with half-hooded eyes.

She takes another sip and then another one. “Nobody’s _accused_ me of that before,” here she offers him a killer smile, more amused than anything. Amélie toes the pointed tip of her shoe against the coffee table and continues, “ _En fait,_ I’ll have you know more than half of my department would do a double take if they heard you say that.”

“What do those fucks know?” He asks as he plays the chorus and skims his tongue along the seal of his mouth in concentration. Amélie shouldn’t pay his tongue that much attention, but she does. “This is a tricky part,” Gabe says and shifts a bit, leaning against the backrest. “Uncle was surprised I managed to get it right on an acoustic guitar.”

“How is your uncle doing?” Amélie wonders aloud, touching her finger to the rim of the glass again. It makes an almost inaudible wet sound.

He stops playing, and she hopes she didn’t strike a nerve. His expression doesn’t give anything away, but there’s something tense about his posture, and he folds both his hands over the guitar’s body. The baby pink camellia flowers remain a ghostly presence in the corner of her vision. Another thing Amélie doesn’t know about Gabe.

The urge to light a cigarette hits her as badly as the desire to know more about him, to know every little detail there is to know about this man.

“He’s got Alzheimer’s,” Gabe answers, and he might as well have said that his uncle was dead. It would’ve been true in a sense. He shrugs in a ‘what can you do about it’ fashion when he sees the concern on her face and then says, “He’s turned eighty-eight this spring and he’s still spry for his age, y’know if you forget that his brain’s slowly rotting away—” a sigh. “Anyway, I’m going to visit him when I’m at my sister’s for Thanksgiving.”

Amélie’s reminded of what little she remembers of her great-grandmother and merely nods in response. The ice cubes in her glass have already melted away.

“ _Shit_ , this conversation is really killing the romantic mood I was aiming for,” Gabe exclaims, grinning wryly and reaching for his glass. He takes a large gulp and grimaces at the sting of the alcohol; the orange peel sloshes in the drink. His mouth’s shining wetly.

Amélie laughs at that and simply replies, “I suppose you’ll have to play something romantic then.”

“Baby,” the word rolls too quickly off the tongue in that unmistaken LA way that makes her toes curl in her shoes, and if she was the type of woman she would fool herself into thinking his eyes were sparkling when he said it. “You make that sound like a challenge.”

She knocks back the rest of her drink, leans over in a way she hopes is sensual and slow and makes the collar of her blouse droop to show off her cleavage and puts down her glass on the coaster, smiling up at him.

Gabe just whispers _fuck_ under his breath and repositions the guitar on his lap.

His palm comes down on the guitar’s body, creating a soft hollow sound like that of a bongo drum, and he bops his head lightly as he establishes a languid rhythm that fills every nook and cranny of the room. He plucks at the snares and occasionally slaps his guitar in tune. She vaguely recognizes the melody from somewhere, but there are a couple of things missing. Gabe closes his eyes and mutters lowly, “Just imagine the trumpets, okay?”

And then to her surprise, he starts to sing ever so softly.

The lyrics are in Spanish, and his tongue curls somewhat hesitantly along the r’s, as if he hasn’t spoken the language in a long time, let alone attempted to sing in it, but his roughened-up voice adds to the slow cadence of the music. Amélie watches him attentively. Tries to take in every detail about him: how the shadows slant over his face whenever he nods his head, the movement of his fingers as he strums the guitar, the darkened blotches on his knuckles, the sight of his muscled thighs straining in his dress pants as he shifts in the armchair.

When he opens his eyes again and stares at her, she slowly breathes in, out, and asks, “Do you mind if I light a cigarette, Gabriel?”

He has the audacity to smirk at her and nods at the half-empty pack of cigarettes on the coffee table, next to the ashtray that’s still too spotless for her liking. Amélie reaches for the pack and the lighter, takes out one cigarette and lights it. The click of the lighter gets swallowed up in the music. Gabe keeps his gaze trained on her as she tips her head back to blow a thin wisp of smoke towards the ceiling and hits the chorus again; his tone of voice meant for the bedroom, for pillow talk.

Amélie slowly starts to rock her hips from side to side in her seat. Takes another deep drag off her cigarette and leaves the faded pink of her lipstick over the filter.

Camellias on the counter, further off his bedroom door’s ajar. Her gaze’s drawn back to him. She wants to chew on the filter of her cigarette.

“You look like you want to dance,” he remarks teasingly as he replays the last two notes and gently brings his palm down on the guitar again, curves his fingers over the body before plucking back at the snares. His smile’s a taunt, a challenge, a flirt all rolled up into one.

She leans over and puts her cigarette in his ashtray, puts her palm flat on the glass tabletop and rises to stand. Slips off her patent leather pumps. Barefoot, Amélie walks over to the armchair and looks down at him with heavy-lidded eyes, and he abruptly stops playing, only lifts his head to observe her. The look on his face is familiar territory to her. Her gaze darts to the cigarette that’s slowly burning up to the filter and leaving the ashtray stained with ash, a pyrrhic victory.

Amélie extends her hand to him and says matter of fact, “I don’t want to dance by myself.”

Looking like he wants to say something but thinking better of it, Gabe carefully puts his guitar down on the floor and takes her hand, standing upright. He’s gained those two inches on her again. She places his hand on her right hip, moves her fingers over the expanse of his arm up to the junction of shoulder and neck, and rests her own hand there. Gabe swallows quietly and draws her closer to him.

“What are we dancing to?” He asks when they start to sway in place. Shuffling their feet in an imaginary square.

“ _La vie en rose_ ,” Amélie replies as she slides one arm around his middle and maneuvers her hand up his shoulder blade, rests her cheek against his. His stubble scours against her skin, but it’s not unpleasant, even tickles a little.

Gabe puts both of his hands on her lower back, and they’re embracing now, breathing hard. “Armstrong?”

“Piaf.”

“ _Oh_ , ok, right, should’ve figured,” he murmurs, a rustle of breath against her ear. The muscles in his strong arms tense against her flanks.

She teases her fingers up the line of his neck and rests her thumb under the curve of his jaw, trying to ignore the queasiness in her stomach and the closed-off feeling in her chest. Maybe this was a bad idea. Sidling this close to him, wanting to slip her arm under his handsome corduroy jacket, wanting him to turn and meet her halfway in this head-on collision. Their chests are touching, not a hairbreadth between them anymore.

Gabe knocks his knee against hers and whispers, “God, do you have any fucking idea how badly I want to kiss you right now?”

His hands are shaking, she can feel them shaking against her body.

Amélie smiles against his skin, drags her lips along his cheek and then he moves too, putting some distance between their mouths—distance she doesn’t want, no matter what—and he touches his left hand to her chin, rubs the pad of his thumb along her lower lip, stares into her eyes with such longing it’s like looking directly into the sun. She murmurs his name softly, in a moan almost.

“ _Please_ ,” Amélie coaxes then, combing her fingers through his mop of curls when he doesn’t seem to make a move, just stands there with her in his arms, staring at her.

His nose brushes against hers, hesitantly, and the grip around her waist tightens, and Gabe breathes the word _okay_ against her mouth.

.


End file.
